


The Delphi Dilemma

by Lycaste



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Bickering, Campy, Canon Compliant, Crack, DJD - Freeform, Delphi, Dysfunctional Relationships, Explicit Sexual Content, Hand Kink, Humor, Lust/Hate, Mildly Dubious Consent, Other, Sexual Tension, Spark Sex, Sticky Sex, Trust Issues, bad paint jobs, combiner experiment trauma, robots under the influence, screwing your boss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-16 16:33:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1354168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lycaste/pseuds/Lycaste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dodging the DJD. Avoiding overtures of friendship from coworkers. Navigating a lust/hate relationship with his gorgeous jerk of a boss. For Ambulon, life at Delphi is still about running. But when a strange event hits the clinic, does he have what it takes to pull it together and help save the day?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know. Unlikely pairing. Weird tags. What _is_ this? Well, full disclosure: ridiculous crack plot held together by gratuitous robot porn of the spike and valve variety. Or is it the other way around? Also contains spark sex.
> 
> Takes place sometime between Bullets and MTMTE.
> 
> And in case you didn't know or forgot: MARB = Mobile Autobot Repair Bay. An extremely versatile Autobot hovering vehicle (from [tfwiki](http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Mobile_Autobot_Repair_Bay)).

Ambulon came online in an unfamiliar room.

His processor jolted to life with a host of frantic questions. Where was he? Where were his gestalt mates? What was happening to him? Wild scenarios raced through his mind, each more horrific than the next. Every mechanism in his body froze. _Gotta come up with a strategy. Gotta escape. When will this be over? Oh please…_

His sensors scrambled to take in his surroundings. There was something heavy wrapped around his chest. Restraints? Fuel pump hammering, he powered up his optics and glanced down.

It was an arm. A white arm. With blue hands, and a stupid wing and vent attached to the shoulder. 

Some of the tension bled from Ambulon’s frame. He cancelled his self-diagnostic reports. Okay, so it definitely wasn't as bad as waking up in an experimental Decepticon lab, but…ugh. Pharma's berth. _Again._

Memory files from the previous night booted. Ambulon cringed. That's right, he had stopped by Pharma's habsuite to drop off some reports, telling himself he'd leave immediately afterwards. “Immediately afterwards” never happened.

Another evening of meticulously shameful overloads did. 

Recently, every other night saw Ambulon violating a new personal tenet. At first it was not to act on his attraction to his pompous aft of a boss. Then he swore he wouldn't engage in actual interfacing with aforementioned aft. Finally he told himself, and he was really serious this time, that no matter what, he wouldn’t spend the night sleeping next to the gorgeous fragger. 

This would make the third time he'd fallen into recharge next to Pharma, dangerously close to something like a habit. Now he was at the part where he wanted to get away. Right on schedule.

_There’s still boundaries left,_ he told himself. _Fragging doesn’t mean anything. Hell, it’s not like we’ve shared spark energy._

Ambulon eyed the door. It was so close. If he managed to slip out of Pharma's possessive grasp and cross the little room, he'd be free. For a little while, anyway. _Just gotta get out that door._ No problem. He'd escaped from worse situations.

Steeling himself, Ambulon slid his fingers under Pharma’s forearm and lifted it with a strength belying his smaller frame. He held the arm steady in the air and shimmied off the berth as quietly as he could. 

Pharma muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “not now, Ratchet.” A hiss from his wing hydraulics slashed through the thick silence in the room. 

Ambulon stopped. Frag. Every scrape of metal sounded like a thundering cannon, but the jet slept on, so he gently placed the arm back on the berth. Foregoing all dignity, he took a delicate little step towards the door. Then another. Then another. 

He slunk away from the berth, optics trained on his escape hatch. His mouth went dry. Soon he could slip back to his own room. Or visit the wash racks. Or do any number of things in the blessed peace and quiet before his shift started and he and Pharma could go back to being irritated colleagues, rather than irritated lovers. 

But just as he was about to cross the threshold that would trigger the door to open, the universe proved to Ambulon that, once again, escape wasn’t for the faint of spark.

"Ambulon," came the voice from the berth, dripping with amusement and fake hurt. "Leaving so soon?"

_Spawn of a glitch. Go now!_

The thought had no real power. Years of working for Pharma had conditioned Ambulon to respond. He turned with his head held high, yet when their optics met, it was impossible to stop the churning in his fuel lines.

Pharma was stretched out on the berth, perfect paint job gleaming. One hand rested casually behind his head. The other stroked his cockpit glass. A half smile graced his handsome face, one with no real warmth behind it.

He looked sexy. Ambulon hated it.

"I've…uh…gotta get ready for my shift."

"You do," said Pharma. "We have a big day today." He motioned with one of his dexterous fingers. "Come here."

"I should really-"

"Ambulon." The false mirth fled from Pharma’s tone, replaced with that hard edge. The one that sent nurses scrambling. "Come. Here."

Before he could stop himself, Ambulon’s feet relieved his mind from the burden of rationalization and took the short, shameful steps back to the berth. This was all part of the power game. He tried to leave, so Pharma would make him stay. If he had tried to stay and have some sort of demented snuggle time, Pharma would be kicking him out right now. 

He didn't have to obey. Pharma couldn’t order him into the berth. He only took what Ambulon gave willingly. Lately though, Ambulon found that the more power Pharma took from him, the more he wanted to give it up. It was dirty and humiliating and it felt _good_. A blessed relief. Like someone had lifted a huge weight from his shoulders.

With a fleeting thought of the door, Ambulon sat next to Pharma. He forced himself to make eye contact, spark whirling madly in its chamber. 

"I'm thinking of instituting a new procedure for neurex saturation." Pharma took Ambulon's left hand and rubbed little circles into his palm. "I don't like how you and First Aid have been mixing it."

Ambulon's fans hitched. "Y-you're kidding, right? We've been mixing it the way you instructed."

"Obviously you both need a written procedure, because no, you haven't." Pharma continued to stroke Ambulon's fingers. "Your saturation levels are at forty percent. I _instructed_ thirty-eight. That's the optimal level for self-repair functions. Also, your mixing station is filthy."

Electric arrows shot from Ambulon's hand throughout his whole body, igniting a fiery throb in his core. He gripped the edge of the berth with his free hand. "Filthy? We clean it every night."

"Clean? By whose definition?" Despite his bored expression, there was a delicious current flowing through Pharma's energy field, one that assured the right amount of riveting cruelty. He swept his thumb back and forth across Ambulon's palm, pressing a little harder each time.

Unable to help himself, Ambulon lolled his head and moaned. No one could stimulate a medic’s hands like another doctor, and Pharma was a master tease when it came to manipulating digits. Or an expert torturer, depending on his mood.

A heavy ache settled into Ambulon’s palm. The metal of his frame was hot to the touch, stifling him. Requests from his interface array climbed his status queue. "Pharma…"

"Yes?" Pharma's face contorted into a mask of innocence, or his haughty approximation of innocence. He flicked his wings once and popped one of Ambulon's fingers in his mouth. His smooth tongue curled around it and sucked. Hard.

Ambulon gasped. A shock of something tight and urgent seized him, leaving him trembling with every swipe of Pharma’s tongue. Making him weak, needy. Freeing him with a disgraceful comfort. He wouldn’t have to think about anything. 

Pharma would take control.

Ambulon vaulted into Pharma’s lap, one hand clenching desperately at a brightly colored shoulder vent, the other burning in the jet’s mouth. Warm heat pooled behind his panel, threatening to leak out the seams onto the perfect bot beneath him. “Pharma…don’t stop.” _Please, please, touch me MORE._ He buried his head into Pharma’s neck and struggled not to whimper. 

It was, as always, a losing battle. Without warning, the fatal crack in his self-control widened. _Oh, fragging Primus, not this again._ A Decepticon emblem appeared before his vision, and the last lines of Ambulon’s gestalt coding activated. The few simple commands that were buried so deeply within his base programming, the Autobot scientists who examined him after his defection didn't dare remove them. 

The vestigial code shouldn't have been a problem. They told him it would most likely remain dormant for the rest of his function. But ever since Ambulon had started fragging his boss, he had discovered that the code activated whenever he was stimulated intensely. It made him fragile for some sort of connection, ensuring that he would lose every one of his encounters with Pharma, every time. And come crawling back for more.

Ambulon swore that Pharma _knew_ too, that the snobby jet could sense it. The thought was both terrifying and a total turn-on. 

A long list of unwanted information scrolled across his HUD, and the tender, empty part of him screamed for more. For the raging overload that would fool those last lines of code into thinking that he had combined. 

It brought him to a point where manual directives weren't given priority. There was a loud click, and his panel retracted. His spike pressurized instantly, popping up between them like a filthy exclamation point.

"Heh…" Ambulon cast a shy glance at Pharma, noting the victorious glow that stole across his face. Oh yeah. Pharma definitely knew.

Pharma eased the finger out of his mouth. "For someone who wanted to sneak away, you were awfully loud about it." He leveraged his superior weight, shoving Ambulon onto his back. "How did you manage to escape from anywhere?" Nimble fingers encircled a skinny wrist. Pharma’s hold was like iron. 

Plating threatened to buckle. Ambulon squirmed. It hurt, both the pressure around his wrist and the comment. 

"Do you know what I think? I think you _wanted_ me to wake up."

Ambulon scoffed. Or he tried to. The resulting sound was far too whiny to convey any real disbelief.

"I think you wanted me to wake up.” Pharma grinned. “I know you like it when I watch.” 

Guided by Pharma, Ambulon's hand closed over his own spike. He never would have imagined he’d be the type of bot who’d enjoy playing with himself for an audience. It should have been embarrassing, but to see that fierce look of hunger, to feel the jet's EM field flare with open interest, the shame morphed into something good and heady. 

“Oh.” Ambulon worked himself in hand, thrilling to the pleasurable friction, touching himself with the hard, measured strokes he wished Pharma would use. He wriggled his legs around the outside of Pharma's hips and hooked them closer together. "Is this what you wanted?” he asked, breathless for approval.

"Almost." Pharma retracted his own panel, revealing his rapidly pressurizing spike. It was large and flashy, like the rest of him. With bold medic colors and white bio lights down the underside. He made a show of teasing himself, free hand still clamped around Ambulon's wrist joint.

There was something so intimate about these mutual jerk-off sessions, about the way Pharma loomed above him like an icy statue. The soft scrapes of shuffling metal and huffing vents. How the jet maintained eye contact the entire time, cooing condescending encouragements while they worked themselves to completion. At first Ambulon thought it was all about Pharma getting off without the messiness of actual interfacing. By now he’d come to believe that his boss had a bit of a voyeur streak. One he was learning to appreciate as well.

"That's it." Pharma all but sneered at him. "You like that, don't you, Ambulon?"

A murmured affirmation left Ambulon’s mouth. His charge rose higher, driven by the blissful feedback loop between his sensitive hand and his spike. He gripped himself hard. Packets of information pulsed through his neural net. Heat. Pleasure. The growing, shaky _need_ behind his interface array. 

All under the weight of Pharma’s penetrating gaze. It was disturbing how willingly Ambulon threw away every part of himself to be pinned by that look. Well, _almost_ every part of himself. He was keeping his fragging chest plate closed, no matter how badly his life force surged in its chamber. 

Fortunately Pharma never uncovered his own spark, although he certainly seemed to enjoy openly masturbating over Ambulon’s prone body. The jet bit his lower lip, optics burning with the same mad concentration he displayed when performing a nano piston calibration. He thrust into his own hand, motor revving loudly. 

Their fingers brushed together whenever one of them moved a hand. Every time Pharma pumped his spike, he sent a lusty charge through Ambulon's already tingling fingers. He grabbed at Pharma's leg with his free hand and groaned.

"Oooo…I know that sound,” said Pharma. "You're close, aren't you?"

Ambulon nodded and shuttered his optics. He _was_ close. He saw warnings of an imminent overload; felt the first lick of bliss around the edges of his lust-addled mind. 

Pharma let go of Ambulon's wrist. "Ask me nicely."

Too far gone, Ambulon's pleas came out in a static-laced jumble. "Please…oh, Primus…Pharma…"

"Good comparison." Pharma wrapped his hand around Ambulon's, fondling the digits in short strokes.

And that was it. The stimulation to his over-sensitive fingers tipped Ambulon over the edge. His back arched off the berth, struts seizing as the first wave of delicious release sizzled across his circuits. He screamed when he came, howling some ridiculous affirmation to Primus and Pharma and oh yes yes. Transfluid splattered across his body as he convulsed with delight over and over and over again.

Half of his systems were offline when the great swell of bliss finally ebbed. He struggled to boot up his optics, not wanting to miss a second of Pharma's reaction.

It was worth it. Pharma's full attention was fixated on him, mouth hanging open as he fervently jerked off over Ambulon's smoldering frame. He looked close himself. Little arcs of electricity popped all over his straining body, and his turbine only whined like that when he was on the verge of an overload. 

Ambulon reached over with his clean hand, intending on returning the favor by rubbing the jet's fingers. 

"No. Mmphf,” grunted Pharma. “Touch my wing."

Wing. Right. Pharma was a medic and a flier, which meant he had all sorts of enticing erogenous zones for someone so aloof. Ambulon sat up. He grabbed the edge of a wing and pinched it hard, sliding his fingers down the length of it.

Pharma moaned, cursed, and overloaded on the spot. He threw his head back. “Ah…yes…” 

It was the best thing ever, to watch uptight Pharma shudder in the throes of pleasure. "Frag, yes," Ambulon whispered, keeping up his punishing massage on Pharma's wing.

Eventually Pharma stopped shaking and leaned forward. The rectangular protrusion on his helm fit perfectly into the groove on top of Ambulon's. Like they were made for each other. A nauseating thought.

Ambulon sighed. It was almost sweet, sitting together like this. Still holding onto each other as programs rebooted and frames cooled. Pharma's energy field, usually held so tight and unreadable, was now relaxed and open. It swirled around Ambulon, buzzing with satisfaction. Almost sweet. Kind of.

The moment didn't last long, it never did. Pharma raised his head and said, "Make sure you and First Aid inventory the new shipment of MARBs that arrived yesterday."

"It'll get done," said Ambulon. As if he wasn't already planning on doing that. They were desperate for more Mobile Autobot Repair Bays after the last one broke down. Pharma had talked about the shipment so many times in the last few weeks, there was no way anyone was forgetting about it.

"And we're tapping a fresh tank of energon for the facility today. Dogfight should be hooking it up now."

"I'm aware."

"Good." Pharma patted Ambulon on the leg and stared absently into space. Already slipping into his ‘distant doctor’ veneer. "Good. I'm gonna go get washed up. I'll see you when your shift starts." He got up and took a rag from his desk, wiping himself off before he tossed it at Ambulon. "Clean yourself up, and clean the paint chips off my berth. I want this place immaculate when I return tonight."

Ambulon caught the rag, trying to hide any reaction to the sting of Pharma's comment. How was it, after everything he’d been through, that words could still hurt? Shouldn’t one become inured to pain over time?

Pharma was half out the door when he stopped. "Oh, and Ambulon?" The wicked, not-quite smile was back. "Don't be late." With that, he flounced out the door, wings held high.

Ambulon flopped back on the berth. Emotional anguish, lust, and humiliation. All before morning energon. Just another day at Delphi. 

Hopefully today’s shift would be a manageable one.

 

For the first time since his transfer to Messatine, Ambulon stepped onto the ward late for his shift. 

He snuck towards a diagnostic station. So far, no Pharma. So no disapproving glare. The day was looking up already. 

Cleaning the berth had taken forever, leaving Ambulon little time to get ready. He'd foregone the wash racks, opting instead for what his Autobot comrades called a "Decepticon Bath". This involved washing yourself off quickly with a wet towel in lieu of taking a real solvent shower. 

He hadn't even had time to properly refuel, as the churning in his tank kept reminding him.

But stepping onto the ward felt good. For Ambulon, beginning a shift was like charging into battle. A fight where saving lives, rather than taking them, was the primary goal. His weapons were propex swabs and energon boosters. His armor was training and knowledge. And his past? His past was long gone when he stepped onto the ward, or at least far enough away to feel like a corrupted memory file. One that couldn't hurt him. Not anymore.

When Ambulon had defected to the Autobots, there had been nothing left. No friends, no future, and, thanks to the wonders of Decepticon technology, no chance of ever repainting himself to blend in with his new faction. He realized early on that if he were to survive he'd need a mission, something to wrap around himself like a force field when things seemed hopeless. 

So he'd adopted a three-pronged objective: save lives, help other defectors, and get some fragging payback. The three ideas fed into and supported each other, allowing him to move forward. It took some of the bite out of the mistrust and mockery. As long as he was in it for those ideas, he was making progress. Frag the Autobots who hated him and to hell with the DJD.

That didn't mean that life was perfect. Far from it. Pharma was a huge source of frustration. His nurse, First Aid, was another.

Ambulon walked to the back of the ward, and spied First Aid huddled in a corner over a vidscreen. He'd like to think that the nurse was looking over patient charts, but it was probably another one of Fisitron's Wrecker entries.

"First Aid," he said. 

First Aid jumped and quickly started tapping on keys. "A-Ambulon! Hey. I was getting worried about you. You're late."

 _Play it cool_ , Ambulon told himself. There was no way First Aid knew the reason for his tardiness. Right? "My chronometer had a minor glitch during recharge."

"Well, it's your lucky day. Pharma’s in a rare good mood. He only criticized my work for ten minutes this morning."

"Wow," said Ambulon. "Only ten? That _is_ a good mood." He didn't mention, of course, that Pharma's good mood no doubt had to do with getting off and having someone else clean up the mess.

First Aid patted him on the arm. "Don't worry though. I won't tell him you were late."

"Appreciate it." Ambulon attempted a small smile. The expression died halfway through and probably looked more like a grimace than anything else. After years of working together, he still didn't know how to deal with First Aid's kindness. Pharma's epic jerkitude was easy; First Aid's offers of genuine friendship were not. 

"Have you refueled? I didn't see you come to the cafeteria for morning rations, so I grabbed you a cube." First Aid picked up an energon cube from a nearby desk and handed it to him.

"Thanks," said Ambulon. He punctured the top, took a long sip, and frowned. The energon had a strange, tangy flavor to it. "This tastes funny."

"Yeah, I know. Dogfight hooked up a new tank for us this morning before he went back to the mines. Maybe it's a little impure. Should be fine though."

Ambulon took another drink. He'd tasted worse. "So what’ve we got today?"

First Aid handed him some charts. “Slow day. Not much to do unless there’s an emergency.”

Ambulon scanned the datapads. Mainly circuit board adjustments and actuator recalibrations. Nothing major. If this turned into a quiet day, they could always do one of Pharma’s neurotic cleaning chores. “Let’s get to it, then.”

They split up the tasks, with Ambulon resetting actuators and First Aid attaching energon leads. All of the patients were offline, so the work went quickly and quietly. Only their occasional instructions to each other punctuated the easy silence. 

The morning flew by in a blur of minor procedures. After a while, Ambulon left his station to check on First Aid again. They could prepare med slabs in the afternoon. Maybe the elusive Pharma would make an appearance. 

A beeping patient alarm derailed his thoughts. It was Backstreet, one of the many miners currently at Delphi for repairs.

Ambulon checked the patient's vitals. "What the hell?" He read the scanner again. Backstreet displayed unusually high processor readings and a wildly fluctuating fuel pump rate, numbers more likely seen on a Syk junkie than on an unconscious patient.

"First Aid, what were Backstreet’s levels when you checked him this morning?" There was no answer. "First Aid?" Ambulon frowned and walked to the other end of the ward. If he caught the little fragger reading instead of working, there was gonna be hell to pay. 

Instead he found First Aid sitting on a chair near a patient, his helm in his hands. "First Aid, this isn't time for a break."

First Aid raised his head. "Sorry. I….I'm not feeling so good all of a sudden."

He didn't look so good either. His hands were trembling, internal components working so hard that Ambulon heard them from where he stood. He ran the scanner over First Aid's body. "What's wrong?"

"I dunno…I just…" 

Ambulon looked at the instrument. "Huh. That's strange."

"What? What's strange?" First Aid jumped up and pawed at him. "Is it cybercrosis? It's cybercrosis, isn't it? Tell me!"

"Whoa. Whoa. Easy. It's not cybercrosis. Primus, get a grip. You've got abnormal readings in your perceptual mainframe and some of your minor processes are fluctuating. Same thing as Backstreet over there."

"Oh." First Aid nodded his head. He kept nodding it as he spoke. "That is weird. I got the same thing from Schema."

"What!?" Ambulon scanned Schema. The actual numbers were different, but the symptoms were the same. Certain systems going haywire. Nothing life threatening, although definitely unusual. He scanned another patient. Then another. Everyone was showing signs of minor malfunctions to varying degrees. "That's it, I'm getting Pharma."

"Oh no." First Aid’s visor flashed. "Oh no no no. Pharma said not to interrupt him until late in the cycle. He was really, really firm about it." His voice dropped low. "Ambulon, he'll be mad."

This was getting too weird. First Aid _never_ cared about getting on Pharma’s bad side. "So let him be mad." Ambulon maneuvered the nurse back to the chair. "You sit here and monitor your functions. I'm gonna go get Pharma and we'll run deep scans on everyone. It'll be fine, First Aid. Try to stay calm."

"Okay." First Aid’s vocalizer broke, like he was about to cry.

Ambulon rushed out the door and down the hall towards Pharma's office. What the frag was going on? It could be a virus of some sort, but that didn't explain how First Aid contracted it. The doctors never shared equipment or hardline connections with patients. His mind spun with theories, discarding them as quickly as he formulated them. There was an uncomfortable churning in his fuel tanks. 

He didn’t bother to ring the intercom outside of Pharma’s door and ask for entrance. Frag niceties, something was wrong. Instead Ambulon barged in and said, "Pharma, we need you on the waa….."

Ambulon never finished his sentence, letting the final word dangle into oblivion. He stifled a gasp, hand flying to his mouth. A dizzying coldness seized his core. _Oh no, no, NO…_

There, standing in Pharma's office as though he were discussing a routine checkup, stood the leader of the Decepticon Justice Division.


	2. Chapter 2

Tarn was enormous, an avalanche of motorized metal. Bigger than Ambulon had ever imagined. He leaned against a table near Pharma’s main desk, sheer presence engulfing the entire room. Everything else was comically small in comparison. 

_This can't be happening._ The gears in Ambulon’s body ground to a halt. Tarn. He frantically tried to make sense of the sight in front of him. Tarn. It was _Tarn_ , every defector's worst fear. And he was having a meeting with Ambulon's boss.

Ambulon struggled to prevent himself from making more horrified gargling. He glared at Pharma. _You slagging, two-faced spawn of a glitch. I do my job, put up with your slag, spend three hours bringing you to the valve overload of your life that one time, and you sell me out to the DJD?_

Cold fury took hold of him. For all the relentless criticisms and insulting insinuations of disloyalty, he never would have thought Pharma capable of something like this. _I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die and it's all because the bot I'm fragging hates me._

When they had warned Ambulon that his assignment would be near DJD territory, he waved them off and accepted it with all the bravado of a true Autobot. Who was afraid of the DJD? Not him. He would sneak by, like he always did. He would save lives in a place that dearly needed it. The DJD wouldn't be looking for him anyway. Not with high profile defectors like Overlord and Drift running around.

Yet there in Pharma's office, actually standing a desk's length away from the notorious Tarn, Ambulon would have given anything to take it all back. He bit his tongue and swallowed against the nausea. If only he hadn't accepted this assignment. He should have taken the DJD more seriously.

He should have left Delphi after the first night he fragged Pharma.

Ambulon couldn't move. He just stood there, vents working overtime. His mouth was dry. _Gotta do something, gotta do something._

The awkward silence stretched on until Tarn broke it with a laugh. "Pharma, is this the state in which you keep your employees? I must say I'm disappointed. Up to this point, I thought we shared the same standards." His famed vocalizer was rich and cultured, a tone so smooth you could slap it on your chassis and use it as a wax.

Pharma remained sitting at his desk. He made a dismissive motion with his hand. "I have to take who they give me, unfortunately. This one’s adequate. He's the field medic for the mines. He was scratched up in a recent cave-in. Trust me, _Tarn_ , you and I share nothing in common."

 _Field medic?_ Ambulon fixed his blazing optics on Pharma. What the frag was going on?

Tarn crossed the distance between him and Pharma in one smooth stride. He laid a massive hand on Pharma's wing. "Are you feeling quite all right, Doctor Pharma? You don't look well."

A closer visual observation of Pharma revealed that Tarn was right. The jet shook, and there was a thin sheen of condensation shimmering across his entire frame. Ambulon heard the low whine of Pharma's engine, like he couldn't control it. 

_Run_ , Ambulon told himself, but his legs didn’t listen. He needed to come up with a plan. If his worst fear was really coming true, then he was gonna go down fighting.

His optics darted around the room. Normally he liked to crash a MARB or two into these big guys and run away while they were disoriented. Unfortunately the only MARBs were the ones that were delivered yesterday, and they were still in the loading dock. He needed something sharp. That might work. Stick something sharp in Tarn's optic and run. Or his vocalizer. Maybe damage that slagging piece of equipment as his last act of defiance.

Before Ambulon forced himself to make some sort of move, Pharma snapped his fingers. "Quickfix, was there something you wanted?"

Was Pharma speaking to _him_? Ambulon finally made the connection to speak. "I…um…we're having some weird readings…err…on the ward."

Pharma trembled so hard that his wing clinked against Tarn's hand. "I'll be there in a minute. As you can see, I'm busy. Dismissed."

Despite feeling like he was rooted in place, Ambulon found the power to move his legs, turned around, and dashed out the door.

 

He fled from Pharma’s office, making it halfway back to the ward before falling to his knees in the hallway. The energon in his lines burned, his tanks threatened to purge at any second. He wrapped his arms around his chest and held himself tightly. _Think. Gotta think._

His processor spat garbled thoughts and confused commands. Nothing made sense. Why had Pharma called him Quickfix? Why hadn’t Tarn arrested him? He couldn't focus. He couldn’t stop shivering. They'd found him. They'd found him and he needed to move. Now.

He heaved himself to his pedes and stumbled. His limbs were impossibly heavy, and his pump hammered so hard it triggered a warning message. Ambulon deleted it. He deleted all the warnings that had stacked up. Given his current state, the messages were indecipherable anyway.

He staggered down the hall, weaving and crashing from side to side as he tried to come up with a plan. Was it better to try to steal a shuttle and go? Should he hide in the mines? 

They’d find him there. They'd find him anywhere.

Spiral ribbons rained across his vision. Something must have fritzed in his optics. Shifting bursts of color covered the walls. He kept moving. To stay in one place was sure to mean certain death. 

The doors to the ward parted before him. Ambulon staggered in and stopped, shocked at the symphony of alarms that assaulted his audio dials. They were all going off at a different rate, drowning him in a cacophony of steady sound. _What in the name of…_

He lumbered to a patient and looked at the attached vidscreen. The words dripped off the display. "What's going on? What's going on?"

He had to go. He really, really, really had to go. But he had a duty of care to these patients. Autobots didn't abandon comrades and run like cowards. Then again, Autobots didn't have to worry about living out the last tormented moments of their lives in front of the DJD.

A tiny voice came from behind him. "Ambulon?"

Ambulon whirled around. The room spun with him. "First Aid. Wha-what's happening?"

First Aid's vocalizer hitched. He wrung his hands, energy field nearly out of control in a flurry of magnetic despair. "Ambulon…why do you hate me?"

"What?" Ambulon took a step back, overwhelmed by First Aid's obvious emotion. "I don't…"

"I try to be nice to you. Thought maybe you could use a friend. But…but…" He threw himself forward and clung to Ambulon's midsection. 

"I don't hate you, First Aid." A manic energy flowed through Ambulon’s transistors. He tried to shove First Aid off. "I just don't wanna get close to people. It's…too hard…after everything…"

First Aid hugged him tighter. He looked up at Ambulon with an eagerness that bled through his face, despite the mask and visor. "You can talk to me, you know," he said.

Maybe it was First Aid’s fierce touch, or maybe it was his plain honesty, but in that moment, Ambulon's gestalt coding pinged him. Within seconds it climbed from polite request to all-encompassing demand, insisting on some sort of connection. Screaming to become part of something greater. Making him dizzy for interfacing, touch, friendship. _Anything._

A fresh wave of fear flooded through Ambulon's lines. Oh hell no. Not now. Not when he was moments from death. He pushed First Aid hard, forcing the little bot to let him go. He then backed to the exit, hands in front of his chassis. "It's not you." He banged his arm against something, peeling off a large chip of paint. The purple patch underneath radiated like a curse. "I gotta…I gotta get outta here."

Patients needed him. First Aid needed him. But Ambulon couldn't listen to that beeping and he couldn't deal with Aid and everything was bleeding together and the panic strangling his spark was so all consuming and _real._ He couldn't read his own status reports. He had to get away.

Ambulon left through the other side of the ward. His legs were slow to obey. He had to use the wall for support, causing more paint chips to flake off his frame.

The purple jumped out at him. Mocking him. "This is how they'll know." The purple paint. Even if they didn't check his energy signature, the DJD would know who he was if they got a good look at all that purple paint.

He had spent so many nights after his initial defection angrily scrubbing at the paint. Praying it would come off and allow him to truly leave the past behind. Now it was back to haunt him. Like a flashing signal that said, "Hey, DJD, traitor on board! Come torture him horribly!"

Tarn would make an example of him. Or they'd send him back to the labs, a fate truly worse than death. They'd make sure he’d never escape. The rest of his days would be reformats and experiments and melting walls and endless torture.

Endless.

The hallway spun. Time ran and stopped in short bursts. The ceiling lighting cast swatches of color and outlandish shapes. Reality unraveled in a way that was both terrifying and familiar.

A high level systems warning climbed his status queue. Ambulon ignored it and looked down at his arm. The paint. He had to get rid of the paint. Then figure out what to do next. He'd tried before. Many times. Maybe this time it would work.

Leaning against the wall, he half-walked, half-crawled to the wash racks and clattered into the first stall. He switched on the solvent shower with shaking hands. The solvent was warm, but it did nothing to extinguish his stifling panic. 

Ambulon grabbed a wire brush and scrubbed. He started with his leg, viciously trying to remove the patch of purple. He scrubbed until his plating stung. The paint didn't budge. It didn't even scratch. Gritting his teeth, he ground the brush into other parts of his body. Large strips of white paint fell on the shower floor and clogged up the drain. 

No matter how hard he worked, the purple underneath never faded.

After what felt like an eternity of scrubbing, Ambulon gave up. He had always been one to remain cool under pressure, but this was too much. The situation was too huge; his emotions too out of control. He slumped to the floor, sitting in a puddle of solvent and white paint as the shower continued to rain down on him.

Ambulon buried his face in his hands, unable to stop the escaping sobs. He acknowledged the idea that existed under every moment since he had laid his optics on Tarn. 

Suicide. 

Could he do it? Could he offline himself? Surely that would be preferable to being tortured by the DJD, or being sent back to the labs.

Shockwave’s labs. The experiments. Despairing in a little cell while your friends screamed around you. Where colors ran down your vision and near panic lived in your wiring. Where the walls melted. Just like….like…

Just like they were melting now.

Ambulon stared at the wall in front of him. This was just like the experiments. The whole feeling, so familiar. Beneath all the terror was the uneasy knowledge that he'd experienced all this before. It was more than the panic, it was the shapes and fuzzy processing and visual weirdness too. He sifted through memory files, awkwardly executing commands, half of which were rejected as nonsense.

He also brought up the most recent warning and attempted to read it. At first the code made no sense, but as he stared at it and struggled to focus, it eventually came into view.

**Foreign Body Scan: Positive. Request Immediate Attention.**

"What the…?" Every molecule of his being held fast, on the precipice of an important realization. 

He finally found the desired memory file. It was small, unassuming and unimportant. Until now. He played it.

The file showed him an image of a small tiled room, not unlike the shower. His past self was on his back, optics fixed on the ceiling. Next to him, one of his gestalt mates giggled.

_"Oh, mech. Haha, Ambulon, check it out, dude. The walls are melting. Hey, Shockwave, you might wanna get the Constructicons in here to fix this!"_

And there, marinating in a pool of fear and dirty solvent, surrounded by his own paint chips, the truth struck Ambulon like a bolt of lightning.

"Cybertropic nanites," he whispered to the empty room. "Holy Primus, I'm tripping my fragging circuits off!"


	3. Chapter 3

Ambulon raced down the corridors of Delphi, leaving paint chips and wet trails of solvent in his wake. 

Cybertropic nanites. Another victory in the annals of freaky-but-effective Decepticon mechanical warfare. Once inside the body, they went straight for the brain module. They then burrowed into key areas of the perceptual matrix: vision interpretation, touch sensor relay, parts of the logic and emotion centers. Once there, they spit out random pieces of gibberish code, causing disorientation, uncontrolled emotional reactions, and hallucinations. Guaranteed to confuse an enemy. 

For a while. Until one realized something was wrong, or started paying more attention to their scans. Still, if you wanted to create a burst of uncontrolled chaos, they worked pretty well.

Ambulon had experienced his fair share of cybertropic nanites and other programming manipulations during his time in the experiment. Although knowing it wasn't real didn't give him much comfort when the DJD seemed to leap out from every corner.

His addled brain functions latched onto that thought. The DJD had poisoned him. Why? They could have simply grabbed him. Had he really seen Tarn in Pharma's office earlier? Was it a hallucination? Or did the DJD have something more sinister planned, something that affected all of Delphi? The patient alarms had been blaring. First Aid had been off his lugnuts. Even Pharma had looked sick.

 _The energon._ Ambulon stopped running. His jaw plates dropped. That made sense. It must have been the new tank of energon. If it was hooked up this morning, it would have been siphoned to the patients. The doctors would have consumed it as their morning ration. But who would poison the energon? And why?

Ambulon scratched at his peeling paint. It was hard to think when time passed in data bursts, rather than one continuous straight line. He struggled to remain calm, to focus on the only course of action that made any sense.

He had to flush this slag out of his system.

Ambulon burst into the ward and careened into a tray of medical instruments. Scanners and nucleon needles scattered everywhere, the noise viciously loud in the quiet room.

Too quiet. A moment ago the patient alarms had been blaring. Or had that been days ago? He wasn't really sure. 

He teetered to an empty med slab, trying to resist the urge to check on patients. If something was wrong with one of them, he couldn't be trusted to fix it. He had to fix himself first.

Ambulon sat on the slab and grabbed the cables to connect himself to the diagnostic computer. He fumbled them into his ports and struggled to read the looping words on the screen.

_Okay. Think. What to do? You don't have time for an entire defrag and reboot. What about flushing the energon lines and running a non-invasive foreign body purge? Follow that up with a low-level defrag. Self-repair can take care of the rest…_

It was far from an amazing plan. Flushing his energon lines would leave him weak and under fueled. Still, he couldn't risk circulating more nanites after he cleaned himself up.

There was a crash. Ambulon turned to see First Aid lurching towards him, somehow managing to knock over everything in his path on the way.

"Heeeeeeey," said First Aid. "Ambulooon." His vocalizer stuck on the 'o' in Ambulon's name.

"First Aid." Ambulon's hands were barely under his control. He attempted to program the computer to begin the foreign body purge. "First Aid, what happened to the patients? Why aren't the alarms going off?"

First Aid shrugged. "They're fiiine. They're all fine. I shut down the master alarm because it was all, like, soooo loud."

Ambulon felt his body respond to the external prompting of the diagnostic computer. He removed the small piece of armor covering the port that lead to his fuel tank.

"What're you doing?" asked First Aid.

"Flushing myself." Careful not to dislodge the cables, Ambulon grabbed a mid-sized flushing hose.

"Oh." First Aid nodded his head, and then shook it. "Wait. Why?"

"Because I'm not feeling so good." No sense in telling the nurse the truth now and having him freak out. Dreamy, stoned First Aid was bound to be easier to deal with than over-emotional, stoned First Aid. 

"Awww," said First Aid. "I'll help you."

"No, First Aid, really. No…that's…agh…" Ambulon tried to shoo him away.

"It's no problem. I'm happy to help." First Aid snatched the hose out of Ambulon's hand and, somehow, managed to attach it to his fuel port. He looked at the computer. "Now, let's see hereeeee….."

 _He's probably going to program some crazy spark jump or something._ "Energon flush! Can you read that?!?"

First Aid pressed a finger to Ambulon's lips. "Shhhh…silly. I used to be a doctor too, you know. No thanks to you." He tapped at the screen with all the grace of a deranged finger painter. 

The pump underneath the medical slab activated with a loud whirr. Cold flushing solution hit Ambulon’s lines. A series status updates flashed across his HUD as the foreign body purge crawled its way through his command tree.

Almost immediately, the colors before his optics became a little more muted. Objects around him became more solid. He gingerly propped himself up against the wall, relief washing through him. He just needed to relax and wait for a little while and things would be much, much more clear.

Unfortunately for him, First Aid decided to wait with him. The nurse chatted incessantly, moving closer and closer with every word, until he was practically sitting in Ambulon’s lap.

"Are you feeling better now, Ambulon? I hope so. You know, I had this thought a little while ago..heehee..it was crazy. What was it? Oh yeah. We're all, like, microchips linked together in one giant processor. Do you believe in Primus?"

"Do you believe in personal space?" Ambulon stuck out his arm, hoping to create a micron of space between them. 

First Aid leaned in to him, until his mask was right next to Ambulon's audio dial. "Don't tell anyone," he said. "I'm on a mission. From Springer."

"Sure you are, First Aid." 

Ambulon concentrated on gaining control of himself, manually running nanite eradication programs and rerouting processing power while First Aid prattled on about the Wreckers. After about twenty more minutes, he felt much better. Still a little giddy and weird, but at least he could string together a coherent thought.

His first coherent thought was that maybe he should get the frag out of there, make a break for it. No one ever died from tripping on nanites. They would flush out of everyone's systems on their own after a few hours. Screw Delphi and loyalty and Pharma with his big spike and bigger feet. 

Yet looking at all the patients, feeling the care in First Aid's actions, Ambulon knew he couldn't. He ran away once to save his life, now he had to stay and save others. Despite the threat of the DJD, he had a fragging job to do. And to do it, he'd need allies.

He carefully unhooked all the cables and tubes from himself. Messages informing him that he was low on fuel took precedence over warnings of lingering nanites. He tried to get up, joints almost giving out as he stood.

First Aid caught him and giggled. "Oops. Easy there."

"First Aid." Ambulon forced a smile on his face that he hoped was somewhat genuine. "Are you ready? It's time for your checkup."

"For me?"

"Yeah, for you." As non-threateningly as possible, Ambulon laid a hand on First Aid's shoulder and steered the little bot onto the med slab. "You helped me with mine and now I'll help you with yours, okay?"

"Oh, um, okay."

Ambulon plugged the cables from the computer into the ports on First Aid's neck. Diagnosis: invasive nanites. He started the same foreign body purge program that he had used on himself.

"What are you doing?" asked First Aid, tapping his fist lightly against his mask.

"Scanning you. Now lie back. This won't hurt. I promise."

First Aid leaned against the wall. "I know. I trust you."

Something inside Ambulon's chest twisted. First Aid trusted him. The thought made a long buried part of him ache. He grabbed a smaller flushing hose and attached it to First Aid's fuel port. "Sit here and relax, okay? I'm gonna go make a call on the main computer over there."

First Aid grabbed his arm. "Wait! Don't leave me."

"I'll be right over there where you can see me." Ambulon picked First Aid's fingers off his arm. "Hey, tell me again about the Showdown at Pova. Good thing that the Wreckers were able to put down Squadron X, huh?"

"Yeah…Pova…yeah…" First Aid fell silent, occasionally muttering as his body was flushed and his mind cleansed.

Ambulon rushed to the main computer and brought up the communications protocols. He needed more allies, and there was only one other group on the planet available for help. Using the emergency frequency, he sent a priority distress call to the mines. Delphi under attack. Please respond.

Hopefully that would get through. Hopefully the mines weren't compromised as well.

Keeping one optic trained on First Aid, he then examined every patient. While many of them displayed weird readings, their vital signs were strong. Ambulon decided to leave them alone. They were unconscious but stable, and flushing them would result in low fuel levels. That kind of weakness was a more dangerous condition for a recovering bot than an unconscious psychedelic journey.

After a little while, First Aid shifted on the slab. "Ambulon." He sounded clearer, but more agitated. "What's…what's going on?"

Ambulon sat next to him. "I need you to do something for me. But before you do, please remember that everything’s gonna be okay." He put a comforting hand on First Aid's shoulder. "Run your foreign body scan."

First Aid was silent for a second, and then squealed. "Nanites? I….I was poisoned?!"

"We all were." Ambulon ran the last programs to direct First Aid's self-repair. "I think it was the energon."

"Oh no,” cried First Aid. “The patients!"

"Are fine. They're fine. I checked them myself."

"W-where's Pharma?"

Ambulon shrugged. "I don't know. He was in his office earlier…with Tarn."

"Tarn?" First Aid's voice dropped to a scandalized whisper. "The DJD is here? Are you sure?"

"No. I'm not sure. I was drugged too." The procedures finished, and Ambulon unhooked First Aid. "I have no idea what's going on either."

First Aid took Ambulon’s outstretched hand and stood. "We have to find him. He could be hurt."

"Or he could be having afternoon energon with Tarn."

"No way," said First Aid. "Ambulon, I don't know what's happening, but Pharma isn't involved in some Decepticon plot. He hates them."

Ambulon didn't like it, but First Aid had a point. If Pharma wasn't involved, then they needed him. He was the best doctor, and he had all the codes to every aspect of Delphi. Plus, unlike Ambulon and First Aid, Pharma had weapons built into his body. 

"I feel shaky, but better," said First Aid. "Let's go check his office. He's probably sitting there working on a datapad, drugged out of his manifold like we were."

Ambulon groaned. "I hope so."

"Oh, come on. This is Pharma. He's a very poised, in-control mech. How bad could it be?"

 

Ambulon regarded the scene in front of him. “Wow…that’s…yeah…”

"Okay," said First Aid. "So it's pretty bad."

Pharma's office was an absolute catastrophe. There were datapads everywhere, most broken and cracked. Smoking craters peppered the walls. The main desk was flipped over and lying on its side, as though to create a protective wall. A disjointed rambling echoed from behind it.

Ambulon edged into the room slowly. "Pharma? Are you okay?"

Pharma popped up from behind the desk. The guns on his shoulders locked into place with a _'klik'._ "Recite this, you twisted sycophant!" He fired his cannons, sending an energy blast tearing through the wall.

Fortunately, his aim was way, way off. Ambulon jumped. "What the _frag,_ Pharma? Stop firing!"

First Aid poked his head into the room. "It's First Aid and Ambulon."

"First Aid?" Pharma powered down his weapons and ran to the door, pulling them inside. "Well, get in here, you incompetent underachievers. And keep your voices down." His EM field was a sinusoidal nightmare. Tendrils of steam hissed from his frame. 

_Paranoid Pharma,_ thought Ambulon. _Great._ If this was a DJD action, they had obviously poisoned Pharma too. "Stay calm, boss. Everything's gonna be okay. We need you to-"

"OKAY?" Pharma roared. "How? How exactly is everything going to be _okay_ ever again?" He shoved at Ambulon. "You never did have the ball bearings to make the hard choices. Someone had to step up. This is _my_ clinic, Ratchet!"

First Aid gasped. “Oh my.”

Ambulon stepped back and frowned. Whatever. This wasn't the first time that Pharma had called him Ratchet, although it was the first time out of the berth.

"Easy, Pharma. We're here to help you," said First Aid, utterly soothing. "You're safe." His energy field swirled with calm.

Ambulon had no problem admitting that, of all of them, First Aid had the best bedside manner. Then himself. Then the maintenance drones. Then the prehistoric bacteria deep in the ice of Messatine. Then Pharma.

"I…" Pharma’s engine sputtered. "I'm doing it for us. For all of us. I'm doing it for Delphi." He grabbed First Aid and shook him. "I'm doing it for Delphi."

First Aid struggled in Pharma's grasp. "And we appreciate it, Pharma. We really do."

"You…you do?"

"What the hell is he talking about?" whispered Ambulon.

"I don't know," First Aid whispered back. "Play along."

"Uhh…yeah, we do," said Ambulon. "Thank you, Pharma, for, um, everything you do." He eyed First Aid and shrugged.

Pharma deflated with a crushed whimper. In mere seconds he went from enraged to destroyed. He looked at them mournfully; face more naked and honest than Ambulon had ever seen. "I think that Tarn…wants to frag me," he said. 

Ambulon shuttered his optics. Oh no. "So he _was_ here."

Pharma threw his arms around Ambulon. "I'm trying. I'm trying to protect us." He lay his head in Ambulon's neck. "What do I do? I do NOT want to frag that monster."

"Okay." Ambulon couldn't tell who was trembling harder, himself or Pharma. He patted the jet awkwardly on the wing, not really knowing what to say. "Okay, Pharma." 

First Aid looped an arm around Pharma's waist and delicately guided all three of them to the door. "Doctor Pharma, weren't you going to let me sit in on watching Ambulon flush your systems? Oh please? I really wanna learn from you. You _are_ the best doctor."

"Okay." Pharma pouted. "I'm the best doctor."

The walk back to the ward was slow going, full of reassuring talk and calm flattery. Pharma barely supported his own weight, opting instead to lean on Ambulon. First Aid propped him up from the other side.

Ambulon grunted and rerouted all available power to his leg struts. He frame was designed to carry others, but Pharma weighed a fragging ton. Where was a MARB when you needed one?

By the time they arrived at the ward, Pharma's mood had improved considerably. He giggled and answered First Aid's questions in an almost flirty tone. He draped himself on Ambulon, humming softly as he trailed his finger down the side of a yellow helm finial.

Ambulon's frame reacted instantly. A luscious, burning pulse traveled from his face to his interface array. He tried to lean away from the touch, his body’s reaction unwanted but not unsurprising. It always made him hot when Pharma touched his face like that. Curious. Possessively. _Oh Primus, please don't let this turn into something unprofessional in front of First Aid._

Primus wasn’t listening, as right before they reached a med slab, Pharma licked the side of his helm, and with a lusty purr said, "Ambulon…I _love_ watching you come."

Time stopped. Every piece of equipment on the ward went silent. Ambulon froze. Oceans of embarrassment crashed over him. For a picosecond, he thought that perhaps he had imagined what Pharma had just said.

Then First Aid leaned on a slab, hand over his facemask, and coughed all sorts of strangled and choked noises. 

_And there goes any authority I ever had in this place._ Out loud Ambulon didn’t react. "That's nice, Pharma." He lay a cooperative Pharma on the med slab. "First Aid, dammit, you wanna help me with this?"

"Sure." First Aid could barely contain his laughter. "Fghzhzgh110001hahahaha. I mean, ahem, sure, Ambulon." He unwound a flushing hose.

Pharma pulled First Aid closer, as though to confide some naughty secret, yet when he spoke, his voice was so loud that a snowmech on the other side of Messatine could have heard him. "Did you know? His spike's purple."

"Really?" cackled First Aid. "I didn't know that!"

Ambulon smacked his palm against his forehead. "First Aid, would you please, _please_ hook up the fragging cables?"

First Aid did as he was told, chuckling and shaking his head. "Thought you had better taste, Ambulon."

Ambulon ignored him, intending to run the purge program, but the computer locked him out when he tried to bring up Pharma’s record. "Fraggit all. I can't run an invasive program on a member of the senior staff without authorization."

"So give it your code," said First Aid.

"What code?"

"Your authorization code."

"I don't have an authorization code."

"Yes you do,” said First Aid. “How did you run the purge on yourself without it?"

"It was a self-diagnostic. I don't need authorization for that."

"How did you run it on me?"

"You're not senior staff."

"Really?" First Aid texted him the record authorization. "You're ward manager. How do you not have this? Even I know it."

"Figures. Pharma never tells me anything." Ambulon glared at Pharma. A really good, disdainful glare that went totally unnoticed as Pharma happily drew circles in the air and lectured on how to properly set a shoulder joint.

Ambulon ran the procedures while First Aid fussed over Pharma. He looked at Pharma's file, annoyed at having discovered another facet of his job that his boss hadn't seen fit to share. More evidence that Pharma didn't fully trust him. He hated how much that hurt.

 _I wonder how many insulting little notes he’s left in my personal record._ Ambulon had never looked at his own file before. Why would he? Yet when he entered his name, nothing came up. "What the…?" 

"What?" asked First Aid.

"Nothing." He tried again. Still nothing. He tried some odd variations of the spelling of his name, but according to the computer, there was no one by the name of Ambulon working at Delphi. 

Maybe Pharma hadn't gotten around to creating a record for him? The thought was absurd, given that he had been at Delphi for years now. Maybe it was standard procedure or something for defectors? Protection from…

Ambulon shuddered. The DJD. He recalled the conversation in Pharma's office that morning. It seemed like ten lifetimes and three nervous breakdowns ago, but he remembered Pharma calling him by a different name. With trepidation running through his fingers, Ambulon typed in the name "Quickfix".

And there he was. Delphi doctor Quickfix, an accomplished physician with Ambulon's likeness. The picture must have been taken after he had fixed his paint, as there were no cracks or chips to be seen. He looked like the perfect Autobot, complete with an illustrious fake history that included Iacon Medical.

A strange itch crawled across Ambulon’s plating. Pharma had given him a false identity. One that could presumably protect him from the DJD, provided they didn't search for his direct energy signature. For some reason, this hurt too. "Oh, Pharma, Pharma." _I still don't get you._

"Mmph…what? Are we done here?" Pharma fidgeted on the med slab, more impatient by the second.

"I think he's starting to come around," said First Aid.

"Pharma," Ambulon said. "I need you to do something for me. Run your foreign body scan."

The look on Pharma's face was almost worth the whole ordeal. His lips parted, mouth falling open. After a few seconds, his handsome features drew into a sneer. Finally he vaulted off the med slab, ripping the flushing tube off himself in the process. "Psychotropic nanites!?!" He tore out the diagnostic wires. "How did this happen?!?"

"Uhhh…boss…um, the procedure wasn't done yet," said Ambulon.

"Yeah, you might wanna lie back down," said First Aid.

Pharma advanced on them, wings twitching. "Answers," he said. "Now."

Ambulon joined First Aid in relaying a semi-coherent version of events. For First Aid, this basically amounted to "I freaked and then Ambulon fixed it." Ambulon added a few more details, although he left out the part where he cried in the shower.

"The patients,” said Pharma. "What about the patients?!" 

"They're fine," said Ambulon. "They were affected but they're all fine. We left them unconscious to let it work through their systems. Figured that was better than flushing them and leaving them without any fuel."

Pharma nodded. "It was the energon?"

"We think so."

"How?"

Ambulon crossed his arms in front of his body. "You tell me. Tarn from the DJD was in _your_ office this morning."

Pharma jolted. "You…you saw him?"

"Yeah, and he didn't have any idea who I was. Weird, huh?"

"Pharma," said First Aid. "Why was Tarn in your office? I think we have a right to know. Especially Ambulon."

"Why do you think, you flighty fool? We're near _their_ turf. They're gonna want to speak to the leader of this base. Of course I have to interact with them at times." He threw his hands up. "Do you think I enjoy it?"

"Why haven't they arrested me?" asked Ambulon. "Why poison us?"

Pharma hung his head. "Oh, Ambulon, the ego on you."

"What? I…the…on ME?"

"No matter what you may think, this isn't about you,” said Pharma. "No way. If they wanted you, they would’ve come for you. Cheap psychedelic nanites aren’t the DJD's style."

"Then who?" said Ambulon. "Somebody definitely poisoned us, and I doubt it was the miners."

"It must be…regular Decepticons. Maybe deserters themselves. I don't know."

"But why?" asked First Aid. "Why us? And why not just attack?"

Ambulon looked around the room at the unconscious patients. "A distraction then. Someone wanted Delphi distracted while the miners were away."

First Aid coiled up the flushing hose. "We don't have anything! Other than energon, which they ruined. That and a bunch of…oh my..."

The realization struck all of them at once, three sets of optics locked on each other.

"Medical supplies," said Ambulon. "That's what we have. Medical supplies and a new shipment of MARBs."


	4. Chapter 4

Pharma tossed Ambulon a propex pistol. “Take this. And why the hell don’t you carry a gun while you’re on duty?”

“What? You told me medics aren’t allowed to carry guns at Delphi.”

“That’s ludicrous,” said Pharma. “I said no such thing. First Aid and I carry one. What would you do in the event of a Decepticon attack?”

Ambulon bristled. That was outright scrap. Pharma had indeed told him not to pack a weapon. Years ago. Shortly after he had arrived at Delphi.

Pharma continued to rummage through his overturned desk, tossing laser scalpels and medichips everywhere. He had exploded at the thought of losing the new shipment of MARBs, and had dragged First Aid and Ambulon back to his disaster of an office. 

He opened a drawer, revealing a multitude of energon cubes. The vivid pink color left little doubt as to their quality.

"That's an impressive amount of high grade in your desk, Pharma," said First Aid.

"Shut up." Pharma gathered three cubes. "Take one. We need to refuel."

"Great," said First Aid. "Now we can be stoned _and_ drunk."

Ambulon took the cube, but fixed his gaze on the metallic object that had fallen out of the desk during Pharma's mad foraging. "Is that a T-cog?"

Pharma kicked the object back behind his desk and looked at Ambulon like he was the stupidest bot to ever exist. "It's a model, genius. Drink your energon."

Ambulon punctured the top of the cube and took a little sip. He did need to refuel. He was feeling more weak and shaky by the minute since flushing himself. Lack of energon, coupled with the effects of the remaining nanites still stubbornly taking up residence in his brain, was making his vision blurry and causing certain subroutines to fail. The high grade helped. A little.

Pharma took a long drink from his cube. "When did you signal the mines?"

"About an hour ago. Erm…maybe."

"Did you hear anything back?"

"No. Incoming communications were down." Ambulon rubbed the back of his neck, wincing when he felt more paint flake off. "Honestly, I'm not even sure if outgoing comms were working. I was still a little…confused when I sent that message."

"So what do we do now?" said First Aid.

Pharma threw his empty cube against the wall. It lodged perfectly into one of the holes he had made earlier. "We finish this energon and go down to the supply dock."

"But-" First Aid didn't have the opportunity to say anything else before Pharma grabbed his arm and shoved the high grade into his face. It clanged against his faceplate, energon running down his chin.

"Easy, Pharma. Let him take his mask off first." Ambulon pulled Pharma off First Aid. "Okay, emotions are running really high and we're all still affected by this." He cast a sidelong scowl at Pharma. "Especially those of us who didn't let our detox procedures finish. Let's all execute a deep vent and think of a plan."

"The plan is we go down to the supply dock and check on the MARBs," said Pharma. "Now."

"Maybe we should wait for backup," said Ambulon.

"And maybe backup never comes! Do you understand what's happening here? It took me months to secure that shipment. If they're stolen, it'll take me months to replace them. Meanwhile we lose the ability to easily transport patients. We fall behind. We become…inefficient."

As much as Ambulon hated to admit it, Pharma was right. It had been difficult over the past few months with no MARBs. They could function without them, but in an emergency facility where seconds counted, repair bays were one of the most important and versatile pieces of equipment at Delphi.

Pharma opened another drawer and grabbed a weapon for himself. "You say you're an Autobot now? Prove it. Help me go down there."

Ambulon gulped the rest of the energon cube. "All right. All right. But you're taking point."

 

The three medics stole down the halls of Delphi. 

Normally there was a bustling atmosphere to the base, an energy that lurked in the background even during quiet downtimes. The palpable buzz of life in an emergency facility. Now it was a tomb, wrapped in a stifling stillness more toxic than Gideon's Glue.

The residual affects of being poisoned didn't help either. Ambulon took a step that, to his own audio sensors, echoed louder than an explosion. He flinched. The silence amplified every move he made, the walls were still a little…melty, and whenever they turned a corner he was sure that the DJD would be standing there, ready to condemn him for all his crimes. 

He could see it now. He'd be taken apart, disassembled. Made a living testament to pain and humiliation. He'd be remembered as a traitor and a failure, his name only spoken in hushed murmurs as an example for both factions. They would…

"Ambulon!" growled Pharma. "Pull yourself together, mech. I can hear your fuel pump stuttering from here."

"Sorry." Okay, no more thinking about the DJD. Ambulon checked his propex pistol. Fully charged. Good. It would be just like Pharma to hand him an empty gun.

They crept down a flight of stairs and into a back hallway. Soon they stood in front of the door that led to the supply dock. Pharma punched in a code to open it. Another string of numbers, Ambulon realized, which were never given to him. 

The security light blinked green. Pharma started to push the door open.

"Hold up,” interrupted First Aid. “What are we gonna do if we find some 'Cons down here?" 

"We're going to shoot them," said Pharma, the plan delivered as though he were explaining a simple stabilizer adjustment. "In the head though, not in the T-cog. It's less painful that way."

"What if we're outnumbered?"

"Agh!" Pharma revved his engine and glared at First Aid. "We'll never know if we don't go in there, will we?"

"Think of it like a Wreckers mission," said Ambulon. "What would Kup do?"

"K-Kup?" said First Aid. "He'd barge in there and kick some aft."

Ambulon smirked. Too easy. Wreckers fans went weak in the struts when you invoked Kup.

First Aid snapped off the safety to his gun. "If we're gonna do this, we gotta remember the Unofficial Wreckers' Training Manual rules."

"What are those?" asked Ambulon.

"Stick together, keep calm, don't make it personal, always focus on the positives, stay the course, and never, ever show any sign of weakness."

"Never, ever show any sign of weakness." Pharma stroked his chin; optics directed at some far away point. "I like that one."

"I don't like the third one," said Ambulon. "Don't make it personal? Screw that. This feels pretty damn personal to me."

"Yeah," said Pharma. "I wanna make it personal."

"Okay, fine, we make it personal," First Aid said. "Let's do this. Open the door."

Pharma nudged open the door, and they snuck down a short hall to the mezzanine level of the supply dock. It overlooked the main storage area, a huge room full of instruments and equipment. At the front of the room was a large set of bay doors that opened to admit delivery ships.

The mezzanine level itself was a grated steel balcony that ran along the perimeter, allowing one to see what was happening in the room below.

And what was happening, the medics discovered as three heads peeked around the corner, was a group of Decepticons stealing supplies. Ambulon counted ten of them, all on the lower level. They argued and laughed with each other as they loaded equipment and nutrient solutions into a small ship. There was a stack of MARBs on the far side of the mezzanine close to the stairs, presumably the next items to be brought down and loaded.

"I knew it." Pharma's hiked up his wings. "Fragging, Pit-spawned Decepticons." He whispered to Ambulon, way too loudly for someone in hiding. "What do you know about these bots?"

"Shhh!" Ambulon pulled his colleagues back behind the corner, out of the direct line of sight. "I don't know them. You think all Decepticons hang out with each other?"

"Don’t you?”

"They're Kleptocons,” said First Aid. "You can tell by their badges. And they're gonna notice our EM sigs any second now. We have to do something."

Pharma clicked his shoulder cannons into place. "Then let's do something."

First Aid grabbed him by the arm. "Are you crazy? There's ten of them and three of us, and we're not exactly fighters. We need backup."

"We've been over this. There is no backup."

"What about Fortress Maximus?"

Ambulon tensed his jaw. Uh oh. "First Aid…don't…"

"What about him?" said Pharma.

“We could revive him by jump starting his spark. I’ve invented this new resuscitation method that-“

"What!?!" Pharma looked like someone shoved a piece of hot slag up his fuselage. He invaded First Aid's space, so close their EM fields had to be mingling. "You did read my report, right? Eternal coma? And you want to try an untested and, quite frankly, ridiculously stupid medical procedure to wake him back up?" His vocalizer dropped to a low timbre. One of his optics shuttered loudly. The left one. **"Are you questioning my diagnosis, Nurse?"**

Ambulon told himself that the hot feeling in his fuel tank was concern for First Aid's safety, not a jealous reaction to his coworkers brushing against each other. "Okaaay, let's…um..." He tried to insinuate himself between them, to push them apart, but the charged crackling in the air was almost too much. Spikes of electric emotion needled at him. Pharma's haughty anger. First Aid's offended concern. Irritation, fear, and oh frag, somebody was a little turned on. Ambulon hoped it wasn't him.

"It'll work. I know it will!"

"First Aid, please… not now," said Ambulon.

Pharma seized Ambulon's shoulder, hard enough to leave dents. "You _knew_ about this idea? And you haven't demoted him to cleaning droid?"

Ambulon shoved him off. "Do we really have to argue about this now?"

"Fine," said First Aid. "It was just a suggestion, Pharma. I thought we needed a plan."

There was a loud bang from the docks and more laughter. Then the clanging steps of a heavy frame making its way up the stairs.

Ambulon peeked around the corner again. One of the 'Cons was going for the stack of MARBs. "Fraggit all." The way he saw it, there was only one plan that had a slim hope of working. "Okay, we gotta move fast or we're gonna lose everything. Hear me out. I've got an idea."

 

 

Anyone could ride a MARB, but it took true skill to surf one with purpose. Or so Ambulon believed, and that belief had served him pretty damn well so far.

After a final nod to Pharma and First Aid, he raced across the mezzanine level of the supply bay, footsteps ringing out like mortar fire. 

The Decepticons noticed immediately. Shocked exclamations came from the bots below.

No turning back now. Behind him, Ambulon heard Pharma transform and take off towards the ship, strafing enemies as he flew. More shots echoed through the room, along with First Aid's demands for surrender.

"Hey," shouted the Decepticon closest to the tower of MARBs.

Ambulon raised his gun and fired. 

The shot hit the ‘Con right in the forehead. A shower of sparks exploded from the intruder’s face. He stopped, suspended in time before he toppled down the stairs.

Fuel thundering through his lines, Ambulon put all his strength into pulling the top MARB from the pile. He hit a quick sequence of buttons to power it up. 

It came on with a whine, the sound music to his audiodials.

He jumped on, grabbed a handlebar, and took off down the stairs. The machine gently pulled to the left, but remained under his control. He gave it more power, pushing it to the limit until it was careening at a strut buckling speed. A little smile tugged at his lip plates. He might have hollered a battle cry.

Two more Decepticons raced up the stairs. When they saw Ambulon bearing down on them, they unleashed their weapons. "Die, Autobot scum!"

"Finally," growled Ambulon, "a factionally correct insult." He activated the brake, laser shots whizzing by his helm, and shifted his weight to his back foot. He then pulled on the handlebars.

The MARB reared up at a sharp angle. At the last second, Ambulon jumped off, swinging himself over the edge of the stairs. He landed on the floor in a clatter, a little scuffed up unhurt. 

The Decepticons on the stairs didn't fare as well. The MARB slammed into them at full force, crushing the faceplate of the first one and sending them both tumbling into a screeching heap of bent metal and spraying energon. 

Before Ambulon could formulate a clever one liner, another Decepticon jumped on him. The ‘Con punched him in the face and slammed his head into the ground, screaming and cursing.

A slew of helm stability warnings flashed across Ambulon's vision. His mouth filled with energon. He kicked out hard, sweeping the ‘Con's feet out from under him. They grappled on the cold floor, trading blows as oil flew everywhere and lubricants dripped from open wounds. 

Ambulon threw a punch, a furious jab with the full strength of a combiner unit behind it. 

While he may have been stronger, the ‘Con was faster. He snatched the medic’s hand in a brutal squeeze, flipped their positions, and pinned Ambulon to the floor.

Pain flooded Ambulon’s sensor net, his dexterity warning system screamed at him to make it stop. He growled and struggled, raining useless blows against his opponent’s chassis.

The ‘Con synthesized a dark chuckle. "That's right. Ha ha, medic's hands." He wormed his fingers into Ambulon's aching fist, spreading them apart, driving his thumb into the palm.

It was agony. Every micro bend in his finger plating brought a fresh pulse of pain. Coolant welled behind his optics. Ambulon wriggled and kicked. _The gun,_ he thought. _I had a gun at the top of the stairs. Must've dropped it when I jumped off._ He thrashed his head back and forth in hopes of locating the gun. 

There it was. A propex pistol in the shadow of the stairway. He squirmed towards it, inching and pulling as if he were simply trying to get away. It was almost within reach. A few more feet.

The ‘Con squeezed harder and laughed at Ambulon's pained wail. "Does that hurt, Sweetspark? That's just the beginning."

Changing tactics, Ambulon threw himself towards his attacker and head-butted him in the face. He spat energon into the Decepticon's optics.

"Argh! You little…."

The hold on his hand loosened. Ambulon yanked himself free, rolled under the stairs, and grabbed the gun.

The ‘Con stood, furious. "You're gonna pay for that, _Nurse._ "

Ambulon jumped up and pressed the weapon against the side of the other bot’s head. "That's _Doctor_ to you." He pulled the trigger. 

Pieces of the enemy’s processor erupted from the other side of his face. He collapsed in a pile of worthless metal.

Ambulon whirled and assessed his position. He'd killed four 'Cons, First Aid was pointing a gun at three on their knees, and another two were lying by their ship, unconscious and leaking energon. No doubt the result of Pharma's fly by.

_Pharma._ He looked around frantically for Pharma, the action causing him to stumble a little. His stabilizers were slow to recover from the punches. His hand throbbed. All the noise was making it difficult to determine what was happening. Where were Pharma and the last Decepticon? "First Aid! Where's Pharma?"

"You mean this pretty little jet?" The last ‘Con stepped from the shadows of their ship, holding a modified laser to Pharma's head. He was big, not Tarn big, but imposing. Just the right size to use Pharma as an effective shield. 

Pharma stood stock still in the Decepticon's arms, seemingly unperturbed at being used for protection. A trickle of pink ran from his bottom lip. Mainly, he looked bored. "Shoot him, Ambulon."

"Don't do it, _Ambulon,_ " sneered the 'Con. "Not if you don't want me wearing your friend's fluid like a new coat of paint."

Ambulon's facial recognition software informed him that this bot was familiar. Blazer was his name. They used to pass each other on the way to the energon dispenser in his early Decepticon days, before Ambulon was “volunteered” for the experiment. He did know this mech. Pharma's bigoted guess was right. Damn.

"Let him go." Ambulon leveled the gun at Blazer. "It's over." _Hopefully._ "There's more of us upstairs." _Not really._ "And backup is coming." _Doubtful._ "Surrender and you're entitled to medical care and energon under the Autobot code, subsection-"

"Oh, frag all that," said Pharma. "Just shoot him."

Blazer eyed First Aid's prisoners, on their knees with their hands behind their backs. "Get up! We still have them outnumbered. Rush 'em."

First Aid didn't take his gaze off his prisoners. "Think you can get up faster than a trained medic can put you back down?" He laughed. His normally soft-spoken tone exuded so much confidence and bravado, one might think they were listening to Springer himself. "It’s over. Finished. Don't make the mistake of thinking you have the upper hand here, guys."

"Let him go." Ambulon's hand shook. Watching Blazer threaten Pharma made him sick to his fuel tank. "We can all still walk away from this."

Pharma furrowed an optic ridge, the visage of someone more annoyed at being late for a meeting than someone terrified for his life. "Shoot him, Ambulon." He continued in a singsong voice. "Shoot him. Shoot him."

"I can't shoot him, you aft. You're in the way."

"Will you two shut up?" said the ‘Con. "Put the gun down."

"Not a chance. Let him go."

Optics locked. Intakes stalled. Seconds ticked by at an agonizing crawl, neither side backing down. Panic threatened to rise in Ambulon's circuits. A microsecond lag in his response time and this whole thing might go bad. But he couldn't, he _couldn't,_ shoot Pharma.

As Ambulon kept his gaze fixed on his enemy, he received a message from Pharma over their private channel. _//What is this? A Decepticon reunion? Stop being a coward and shoot him!//_

_//I'll hit you.//_

_//So what? Do it somewhere non-fatal.//_

Blazer tightened his grip on Pharma until the metal of his wings squealed. He took a step towards the shuttle. "Change of plans, morons. I'm leaving, and I'm taking this one with me." He jutted his chin towards Ambulon. "Try and stop me, traitor, and he dies."

Ambulon's inter-Autobot communication system pinged him with another message from Pharma. _//Ha! You do know these bots. I was right.//_

_//Will you focus, please?//_

_//I'm trying but it's a little hard when some thug is crushing a sensitive part of your body. SHOOT. HIM.//_

_//Dammit, Pharma. I need a clear line of sight. Engage your thrusters or something.//_

Pharma's expression lit up. There was a loud hum as he fired his thrusters and turbine at full power. Blazer yelped, suddenly enveloped in a wall of flame and smoke. He must have eased his hold, as Pharma threw himself to the ground and rolled away.

Blazer tried to clear the smoke in front of him, waving his free hand wildly while the other hand fixed the gun on Ambulon.

He wasn't fast enough. Ambulon took the shot, hitting the other mech dead center in the chest. With grim determination, he emptied the entire propex canister, feeling nothing as he watched Blazer fall to the ground with his chassis half-ruptured, the light from his now exposed spark rapidly dimming.

Pharma got up and brushed himself off. He picked up the dead ‘Con's gun. "Dammit. I told you to hit them in the head, not the T-cog."

Ambulon scowled. Seriously? "Thanks for saving my life, Ambulon. Oh, you're welcome, Pharma. It was my pleasure."

Pharma ignored him in favor of squeezing a round into Blazer's head. He then stalked towards First Aid's prisoners.

"Hey, hey," said Ambulon. "Wait a second."

"Pharma," said First Aid. "Don't."

"And why not?" said Pharma, pressing the gun to the helm of one of the prisoners. The bot whimpered and looked at them with pleading optics. "They were ready to kill us. We're at war, in case you two have forgotten."

"Yeah, but we’re not warriors." Ambulon placed a gentle hand on Pharma's wing, trying to soothe the bent metal. "We save lives, we don't take them unless it's self-defense." 

"Please don't do this," whispered First Aid.

Ambulon rubbed comforting circles into Pharma's turbine. "Come on. This isn't you. Be the best at saving lives, don't be another mediocre killer."

Something passed across Pharma's face, a flicker of some emotion. Too quick for Ambulon to identify. He lowered the gun and everyone sighed at once, the tension bleeding from the room. 

"Thank you." Ambulon released a vent he didn't realize he'd been holding.

Pharma didn't acknowledge him, but he didn't push him away either. "We'll put them in the brig. I'll ask High Command what to do with them."

First Aid cocked his head. "You guys hear that?”

Ambulon heard it. The clomp of footsteps gathering outside the main access door. Lots of them.

The medics raised their weapons and put their shoulders together, standing as a united front. "Shoot fast and make it count," said Pharma. "If there's too many of them, I'll transform and lay down cover fire. You two retreat to the ward."

The door blew off its track with a bang. To the medics’ relief, the bots that entered the supply dock weren’t Decepticons. 

"The miners!" cried First Aid. "Wow, are we glad to see you guys."

The miners, a huge and rugged cadre of mechs, stopped and took in the room. They looked at each other, then at the multitude of dead bodies, then at each other again, bewilderment written all over their faceplates. Finally the leader, Dogfight, burst into rumbling laughter. "No way! You three wimps took out this many 'Cons? How many is this? Eight?"

"Try ten," said First Aid.

Dogfight laughed harder. "Ten? I can't believe it!"

Another miner grinned. "Heh, nice job. We thought that distress call was a prank. What with all the cryin’ and blubberin’ about the DJD."

Ambulon shrank under Pharma's wing. Hopefully there wasn't a permanent recording of that somewhere. 

"Yep," said Dogfight. "Thought for sure you'd all be dead."

Pharma scoffed and drew himself up to his full, pompous posture. He slung an arm around both First Aid and Ambulon. "This is Delphi," he said, clicking his shoulder cannons into place. "Nobody dies unless _I_ say so." 

He looked so sexy, so dominant. Like wielding fearless control was his default setting.

Ambulon realized too late that his own cooling fans had come online. Mortified, he scrambled to shut them down before anyone noticed. Yet in that moment, he could have sworn that he heard First Aid's fans turn on too.


	5. Chapter 5

Putting Delphi back in order took the rest of the shift. 

Pharma wasted no time in setting the miners to work. They unloaded the stolen supplies, brought the MARBs up to the main ward, hooked up a clean energon tank, and swept the body parts off the floor. It was somewhat vindicating for Ambulon to see the rough and tumble miners jump to do Pharma’s bidding. That authoritative tone worked on other bots too, thank Primus.

Ambulon and First Aid were put in charge of flushing and refueling all the unconscious patients. It was an arduous job, although they still finished in record time. Pharma hadn’t been impressed in the slightest. He simply sniffed at the sight of the fixed patients, and directed Ambulon and First Aid onto separate tasks.

Ambulon received the magnificent honor of picking up Pharma’s office, with strict orders not to touch anything. How he was supposed to clean up without touching anything, he wasn’t sure. He settled for righting the desk, pushing the table back in place, and picking up the datapad shards. He did nothing about the holes in the wall. They were from Pharma’s fragging shoulder cannons anyway, let _him_ fix them.

He was still in Pharma’s office when the shift finally ended. It felt like one of the longest cycles of his life. Surely it was impossible that running into Tarn, being poisoned, fighting off Decepticons, and then fixing everything all happened in the same day. 

Exhausted, he settled himself into the Tarn-shaped indent on the table. He traced the outline of it. How many times had the fearsome DJD leader sat on this table? How many times had he watched Pharma work, lust seething behind his red optics?

Ambulon shivered. If Tarn really did want to interface with Pharma, the jet was screwed. Literally and figuratively. Tarn would pursue him with the same relentless dedication with which he pursued all his victims. There would be no escape, no backing out, and no scaring him off.

Or would there? Ambulon tapped his fingers against the table. Was it possible to discourage Tarn without sending him into a murderous rage? What if Pharma just seemed less…desirable?

A wild idea occurred to him. Ambulon picked up one of the last functioning datapads and, with his newly learned authorization code, brought up Pharma’s personal record. With a few swift entries, it contained a new piece of information. He left the datapad turned on and placed face up, innocuous from Pharma’s vantage point at his desk, but someone sitting on the table wouldn’t miss it. Someone who couldn’t resist an open glance at Pharma’s medical information.

Ambulon left the office and walked through the silent halls of Delphi. He needed recharge, to give himself time to reset and allow his neural net a badly needed purge and defrag.

But before he made his way back to his own room, (which was, he insisted to himself, the ultimate destination), there was something he needed to do. A question that needed answering. Hell, he'd never sleep again unless Pharma cleared up this business with the DJD. 

So Ambulon found himself standing in front of Pharma's quarters, report in hand. He could have sent it over a private frequency, but this discussion needed to happen in person. 

_A discussion,_ he reminded himself when he rang the chime. That’s it. Ask his question, get his answer. Go back to his familiar existence with the missions that sustained him. Save lives, help defectors, get fucking payback. 

The door slid open to reveal Pharma, and Ambulon thought about adding "don't frag your sexy superior" to that list. How the hell did Pharma look so pristine and polished after the day's ordeal? 

"Hey."

"Yes?"

Ambulon handed Pharma some charts and eased his way inside without being invited. "Um…crazy day, huh?"

"The biggest understatement in the history of Delphi. What's this?"

"Patient records. And my version of today's events. Figured you'd want it."

Pharma groaned. "High Command is gonna purge over this. Honestly, I don't know where to start with all the reports I have to do for this incident."

"I certainly don't envy you that."

"So,” said Pharma, “I managed to rebuild most of my memory files, though parts of today are still corrupted.” He paused. “I didn't…I didn't do anything unprofessional, did I?"

Dark delight flickered in Ambulon. He was gonna enjoy this moment. "Let's see…you completely freaked out, trashed your own office, fired weapons at your employees, cried over Tarn wanting to 'face with you, and talked dirty to me in front of First Aid."

"I see." Pharma examined his lithe fingers. "But I didn't, say, misdiagnose a patient or anything, right?"

"No,” sighed Ambulon. “You didn't misdiagnose a patient." 

"Excellent. I was worried I did something embarrassing."

Ambulon put his head in his hands. Right. Something embarrassing. "Listen, there was something I wanted to ask you too."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. We've gotta talk."

Pharma's faceplates scrunched up like he swallowed a glass of bad engex. "Spare me. You wanna talk _now_?"

_Of course,_ thought Ambulon. _Your needs only exist when the great Pharma allows them to. Remember?_ He clenched his trembling fingers into fists. That Pharma could hurt him with such a casual dismissal made him hate both of them. "You know what? I really don’t. I’ll see you in the morning, _sir._ "

He shoved past Pharma, only making it a step before the jet caught his arm. "Wait. Fine. What did you want to say?"

"Let go of me." Ambulon tried to pull away.

Pharma gripped tighter. "Oh, come on, Ambulon. Look, I'm listening, okay? First Aid's right. You are tetchy."

"I'M tetchy?!" Fury over the insult gave Ambulon the extra impetus to twist free. 

Pharma blocked his exit. "I lied to Tarn."

"You what?"

"This afternoon. In my office. When I said you were an adequate doctor. I lied about that. You're better than adequate. Much better."

Ambulon faltered. Oh frag, not a compliment. That couldn’t be real. He felt himself soften, just a little. Enough to recognize the moment for what it was, the point where he would calm down just enough from a state of self-serving, frag-the-consequences anger. Dammit.

"You're also reliable,” continued Pharma. “I can count on you. I never say it, but I do appreciate it." He stepped forward, forcing Ambulon to step back. "And you have high standards." Pharma leaned in until they were cheek to cheek. "I _love_ high standards."

Oh Primus help him, but the words sent a thunder stroke of desire straight to Ambulon's core. His frame began to warm. "Ph-pharma…"

Pharma brushed paint chips off Ambulon's shoulder. "And you might be somewhat attractive, if you ever bothered to clean yourself up." He folded his arms in front of his cockpit. "Now, what did you want to talk about?"

Ambulon tried to ignore the prickle through his traitorous frame. "Pharma," he said. "I…I can't live like this. I can't spend every second worrying about the DJD. I..."

" _That?_ That's it?" Pharma waved a bored hand. "That's taken care of. Just keep your head down and don't attract attention. And for pity's sake, don't barge into my office unannounced."

"You…"

"Took care of it. Like I said. The DJD don't know who you are."

"Is that why you changed my name in the system?" asked Ambulon.

"Yes. As far as Delphi and Autobot records are concerned, you're Quickfix, a talented but tetchy medic." 

"My energy signature,” said Ambulon. “They could still track me that way."

Pharma shook his head. "They'll be looking a long time. Ambulon's old energy signature doesn't exist anymore."

Ambulon shuttered his optics. He then replayed the last five seconds of his memory files to make sure he had heard correctly. "Doesn’t exist? How?"

"I changed it."

"You changed my energy signature?"

The smugness emanating from Pharma could be measured in kilotons. "I did."

"Pharma, that's impossible."

"Ambulon, no it isn't."

"An energy signature is tied directly to your spark and frame. You can't just change that."

"Actually, you can. It's a delicate procedure, but with a few tweaks to your spark chamber and harmonic resonance centers, I gave you a whole new life." Pharma stuck his nose in the air. "You're welcome."

"A few tweaks to the spark chamber?" squeaked Ambulon. Medical procedures didn't get more invasive than that. "When did you even _do_ this?"

"When I put you out for your initial medical scan. A masterstroke, if I do say so myself. Done so subtly, you apparently didn't notice."

An edgy, twitchy feeling seized Ambulon. Being whipsawed between fury and arousal was so taxing. He should be used to it by now. "You spawn of a glitch," he hissed. "I came to the Autobots to escape being manipulated. You did all this and didn't _tell_ me?"

Pharma was on him in an instant, towering above him, optics flashing. "And what would you have me do, exactly? I run a very busy, understaffed medical facility on a desolate rock with the DJD venting down my cockpit. And High Command sends me a fragging _defector_ for help. I had to do something to ensure your safety."

"You still should have told me."

"I thought you'd be safer if you didn't know. Plausible deniability and all that. _You_ shouldn't have taken this assignment. Who in your situation agrees to work in DJD territory anyway?"

Ambulon gently rung his hands and stared at the floor. There was no way to explain to Pharma how he had felt when he’d defected. Fueled by righteous anger and the seductive promise of good luck. Invincible. Sometimes he still felt that way. Sometimes it all seemed like a big fragging joke. "Yeah…I think…maybe…I don't always think decisions through that well."

Pharma simply huffed and looked away. “Yes, well, sometimes you think you're making the best decision given your circumstances, and then you get locked in."

_What the hell is he referring to?_ Ambulon had the distinct feeling that they were talking about different things. He regarded Pharma, standing a mixture of proud and dejected. The jet was always so perplexing. Civil one second, cruel the next. He was driven by ego and control, though he applied all his skills towards helping others. 

And he was gorgeous. Ugh. And brilliant. And there were moments when he was a genuinely okay bot. If Pharma himself was complicated, then Ambulon's feelings for him were a tangled disaster. 

"Thanks." Ambulon didn’t know what else to say. Then something occurred to him. " I sign all my work with my real name."

"The Delphi records policy is programmed to replace all instances of Ambulon with the name Quickfix after a certain timeframe,” said Pharma. "You would have realized that by now, if you ever bothered to go over your older notes."

"Well, you know, we're an emergency facility. I don’t often see the same patients twice," said Ambulon. Why was it impossible to gain the upper hand in any conversation with Pharma? “Except…I guess…the miners…”

"Uh huh,” said Pharma. His lips ticked up into an actual grin.

With his anger somewhat diffused, Ambulon became painfully aware of how close they were standing. He could hear the humming of Pharma's internal mechanisms, feel the slight buzzing of an amused and disheveled EM field. But to see that rare Pharma smile, not the cold approximation he gave patients, made Ambulon's struts weak. He eyed the door. If there was ever a time to leave, now was it.

Pharma took another step and closed the space between them, brushing his cockpit glass against Ambulon's chest. "Do you know what else I like about you?" He rested his helm on top of Ambulon's. "You're hot in the berth. Never would’ve guessed that."

Ambulon's faceplates burned as the fuel lines underneath them filled with energon. Hot in the berth? Him? Most of the time he just lay there, whimpering and clutching, begging for more. Maybe that was Pharma’s ideal lover. 

"And yet you blush over interface talk," said Pharma. "That’s so cute. Who _does_ that?"

"Shut up, Pharma." Given their proximity, Ambulon did the thing that came most naturally to him in the moment.

He brought their lips together. 

Just to get Pharma to stop talking, of course. And mistakes be damned. He wanted, no he _needed,_ whatever cold comfort he could get from a stolen kiss. 

Usually when they fooled around, mouths were for sucking, pleading, or insults. They rarely kissed. This was no doubt why. It felt so real and wicked to have Pharma's mouth on his, harsh and demanding like everything else about the jet. A reckless little groan rumbled from Ambulon's throat. 

"Mmmmm." Pharma walked them both towards his berth. His hands roamed everywhere, exploring joints and stroking pieces of armor that should have been a tire or window. He fondled Ambulon's clunky, awkward body like it was a work of art. Like he wanted it. He didn't even seem to care about the paint chips flaking off. 

Ambulon’s legs hit the berth. Immediately the Decepticon insignia blinked to life before his vision, warning him that his gestalt coding was seconds from activating. _Damn, that was fast._

Fortunately Pharma was never one for extended foreplay. He guided Ambulon none too gently onto his back, and tapped at his interface panel in a wordless command. Something sharp and focused glittered behind his optics. Something powerful.

Ambulon couldn't have prevented his panel from opening if he wanted to, which he really, really didn't. It moved back with a loud click, and those last damnable lines of gestalt coding executed. Telling him it was time to connect, to combine fields and frames and minds. Crushing his pride in a trickle of warm lubricant. Making him want Pharma with a fiery anguish that left his frame aching and his ventilation system on the verge of shutdown. 

Pharma dragged his fingers in a torturous path, drawing light circles around intimate plating. 

Ambulon bit his lip. "Pharma, ah, please…”

"We’ve reached the begging already?" Pharma dipped his digits into hot mesh. "What a treat.”

The treat was the explosion of pleasure through Ambulon's sensor net as facile fingers brushed over his neural clusters. He ground his hips into the touch, arching and moaning, little arcs of delicious charge running through him. It was _good._ At the same time, it was disgraceful, the scandalous act of having his boss' hand stuffed in his valve. Ambulon spread his legs wider. He needed more. More stimulation and crackling energy and more of Pharma's assertive presence smothering him into the berth. His body longed for it. His coding demanded it. 

There was a soft click of a plate unlatching. Ambulon's optics widened. He slapped his hand over his chest and overrode the automatic opening of the armor covering his spark chamber. Sharing sparks was something he _didn't_ need.

Pharma threw him a knowing grin. "You want more?"

Ambulon nodded.

"What was that?"

"More. Please. I want…" He was having trouble sorting through the sensations, separating the physical pleasure from the yearning in his spark. Their optics locked. Ambulon’s fuel pump quivered at the forceful look on Pharma’s face. He felt impossibly small, but the depths of his desire forced out the words with confidence. "Spike me?”

Well, semi-confidence.

Not that it mattered. Pharma's spike was out and pressurized in seconds. His engine roared as he took hold of himself, lust coming off him in coiled bursts. 

The thought made Ambulon dizzy. Pharma wanted _him,_ wanted to mutter backhanded compliments and grip his hip this side of too hard and, _oh Primus,_ penetrate him in one swift, sure move. Flexible netting gave way to hard polished metal. Ambulon sighed, reveling in the shameful indulgence of being filled by Pharma’s thick spike.

The first thrust had Ambulon grasping the jet’s side with a muttered curse. The second had him pleading to be taken harder. And by the time Pharma had built up somewhat of a rhythm, Ambulon was moaning and clutching and praying in desperate, hitching half-sobs. 

Captive to the wonderful friction, he dissolved in his lover’s all encompassing presence. The sheer hunger emanating from the jet threatened to stifle him. Pharma's wings were massive above him, blotting out his vision and surrounding him in a cage of scorched metal. An oppressive relief. Making his coding sing with the connection. 

"You like that?" panted Pharma. "You like it when I frag you like this?"

Ambulon groaned and buried his face in Pharma's neck. 

"I know you like it. I can _hear_ your interface relay controls cycling faster." Pharma dug his fingers deeply into Ambulon's hip joint, approaching that tenuous line where pleasure became pain.. "Oooo…and I can feel your calipers tighten. Mmphf.”

Pharma was right. Electric bliss built hard in Ambulon’s capacitors, teasing the edge of his awareness with the promise of a flood of pleasure. He writhed, so close to tipping over. "Pharma…oh …"

Pharma sat up slightly, Ambulon’s legs still wrapped around his waist, and dove his nimble fingers further into Ambulon's hip joint. With a concentrated frown he flicked his wrist and pulled something loose.

Ambulon cried out, more in shock than in pain. The pleasure was still there, now softer and muted. Like riding along some delicious edge. The climax in sight, though unreachable. He wriggled. "Wha-what are you…"

"Now this," said Pharma, wrapping a wire around the finger still lodged in Ambulon's frame, "is your primary interface transmission cable. Without it connected, your processor can't receive the signal from your array, and you can't achieve an overload. But you already knew that, I'm sure. Being a doctor."

Ambulon gaped as he tried to process what had happened. Did Pharma _really_ disconnect a major cable while his partner was on the brink of an overload? A dizzying parade of emotions marched through him, from rage to frustration to desire and back again. "You…you…" 

"Don't worry," said Pharma as he leaned a little closer, his spike still deeply sheathed. "I'll put it back. You're in the best hands, you know."

"You fragging, sadistic piece of…" Ambulon half wanted to throw a punch, half wanted to burst into sobs and beg for the overload that was _right there._

Pharma tapped Ambulon's chest with his free hand. "Why don't you want to give me this?"

Ambulon froze. His hand shot up to intercept Pharma's. "No," he pleaded. "Don't."

But his body, his traitorous, Pit-spawned body was saying yes. His spark whirled so fast it felt like it would burn a hole through his chest. He overrode an automatic command to open his chest plate. Then again. And again and again until anxiety started to corrode desire.

"Easy. Easy, Ambulon. I'm not gonna force you."

Ambulon pressed both hands to his chest. "You only…you only want it because I don't wanna give it to you."

"No. I want it because it feels amazing. A little spark play doesn't mean anything serious, you know. It's not like I'm asking you to bond with me. Which, by the way, I have no desire to do."

"I don't…I can't…" 

"Are you afraid?"

"No!"

"Then what's the problem?"

Ambulon looked at the wall, unable to make optic contact. The problem was that he _was_ afraid. The problem was that he didn't want to give that last little intimate piece of himself over to Pharma. The problem was that fragging was one thing, and sharing sparks was another. Something beautiful and sweet that would cultivate a weakness powerful enough to eat him alive. He knew it was a Decepticon attitude, one that he still couldn't reprogram. Or didn’t want to.

"Oh, I get it. You’ve never done this before.”

Embarrassment surged through Ambulon, so potent that Pharma surely felt it through their mingled fields.

"Ha, that's precious!" crowed Pharma. Ambulon must have had a murderous look on his face, as Pharma's tone quickly changed to soothing. Or his approximation of soothing. "It won't hurt. It's fine. Look." There was a soft whirr, and Pharma’s chest plates slid apart. Soft light shone through the cracks. "I'll show you mine."

"Oh, no, no, no. Don’t! Pharma…stop."

Pharma didn't stop. His plating moved aside and the brilliant glow of his spark poured out. He traced the outline of its chamber, completely unashamed to expose himself in such a manner. 

As a medic, Ambulon had seen his fair share of sparks. But never like this. Never pulsing with life and desire, embedded in a frame so lovely. It was beautiful. Pharma was beautiful. And Ambulon knew he was lost. _What have I gotten myself into?_

"Now," said Pharma. "Let's see yours."

The uncomfortable digging in Ambulon’s joints gave way to a rush of blissful sensation as Pharma connected the interface cable again. At the mercy of an onslaught of quaking pleasure, he threw his head back, teeth clenched. No longer under his command, his plating unlatched and spread apart. 

Pharma stared at him with wide-eyed fascination. "Yes. Yes." He stroked Ambulon's face. "Break apart for me. See? That wasn't so hard.”

It was like breaking apart. More than his armor. The light from his open chest bathed Pharma's leering face. Ambulon gasped, utterly exposed and horrified, but letting go for Pharma felt better than it had any right to. The submission was freedom. The loss of control, a relief.

Ambulon whimpered a shy laugh at the sight of Pharma’s intense expression. “You were expecting it to be purple?"

"No," said Pharma. "I expected it to be _mine_." He brought them together, lowering himself so the conductive nature of their life forces could swell and coalesce.

Ambulon’s spark reached for Pharma’s, essence locking together tight. Much to his hazy surprise, it wasn’t like he thought it would be.

It was so much better.

A heavy, intoxicating energy crawled underneath his plating. It spiraled around his cables and spun lazily through his limbs. It smelled and tasted like Pharma, like every deliciously damned moment of satisfaction they had shared together. Magnified. Near overwhelming. Drowning Ambulon in the merging of the energetic spark, a sea of bliss previously unknown to him.

The overload built forever. He skated the edge for an eternity, until it blotted out everything else. Until release pulled him under. His spark throbbed. Every pulse sent a wave of circuit-melting pleasure through his frame. He convulsed and shivered, coming hard with a heated sob of Pharma's name.

And his gestalt coding. The scant lines nearly crashed his core processor, flashing new information, telling him that this was _right_. Executing a feeling of completion that he hadn't felt since the experiment. 

It wasn’t much longer before Pharma thrust hard. A fierce cry spilled from his lips. 

Ambulon swore he'd never heard anything so perfect in his life. A shock of current slammed into him, setting him off all over again, bringing him to another seething peak. 

They clung to each other through the aftershocks, twitching and grunting each time a lingering convulsion seized either one of them. Pharma's turbine sputtered. He threaded their hands together, making Ambulon's spark skip in an entirely different way. 

Eventually Pharma pulled himself up and flopped down on the berth, his arm settled around Ambulon's waist, fingers still intertwined. He shut his chest panel with his other hand, then shut Ambulon's with an unusual tenderness.

"See?" he said. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Every strut in Ambulon's body felt like rubber. He didn't want to stroke Pharma's already huge ego, but damn. "No. That was very," he let loose a shaky exvent, " _very_ good. You were right."

Pharma smiled into Ambulon’s neck. "Your berth talk is the best. Say that again."

"You were right, sir." He tried for sarcasm. It came out as near-breathless praise. 

"Keep that in mind," said Pharma. A satisfied rumble came from his motor. "Can I ask you something?"

_Oh, scrap. What could this be?_ "What?"

"Do you ever transform?"

"I…what?"

Pharma repeated the inquiry like an Iaconian noble talking to a foreign tourist. Louder but not slower. "Do you ever transform?"

"See, now _your_ berth talk? It's the worst."

"It's a simple question, Ambulon. What are you not understanding?"

Ambulon stared at the ceiling and wondered how Pharma always managed to convert nice moments into bizarre moments so quickly. "No, Pharma, I don't. Why the hell would I?" He shrugged and added, "Although sometimes it is tempting to shift into my alt mode and kick First Aid's aft across the medibay, I never transform."

"Hmmm. First Aid. Do you think he ever transforms?"

A jolt of irritation spiked through Ambulon's post-overload daze. "Whoa! Oh no, Pharma. Frag no." 

"What?"

"If this is your attempt at proposing a three way, the answer is no."

Pharma propped himself up, displeasure written all over his face. "What is wrong with you? Of course not."

"Well…I don't know."

"Fine. You don't have to be such a gearstick about it. I was just asking."

"About transformation habits of coworkers? In the berth?"

Pharma nuzzled his face against Ambulon's helm. "Jealous?”

"Jealous? I'm not…how could you think…ugh…you're impossible, Pharma."

Pharma silenced him with a kiss. A slow, sweet melding of the lips that made Ambulon's T-cog flutter. "I'm incorrigible." He licked into Ambulon's open mouth, tasting like oil and high grade. "There's a difference." He winked and lay back down again.

Ambulon eyed the door, visible from his position on the berth. Now. _Now_ would be the right time to leave. Thanks for the overload, I'm outta here. He did have his own room in this facility. Complete with his own berth that didn't contain a sexy, aloof jet that made him feel more confused than any cybertropic nanite ever could.

But Pharma's arm around his body felt like protection, and the little kiss on his helm could be mistaken for affection. And despite his better judgment, Ambulon snuggled in closer.


	6. Chapter 6

_The Next Morning_

 

Ambulon came online in an unfamiliar room.

His processor jolted to life with a host of frantic questions. Where was he? Where were his gestalt mates? What was happening to him? Wild scenarios raced through his mind, each more horrific than the next. Every mechanism in his body froze. _Gotta come up with a strategy. Gotta escape. When will this be over? Oh please…_

His sensors scrambled to take in his surroundings. There was something heavy wrapped around his chest. Restraints? Fuel pump hammering, he powered up his optics and glanced down.

It was an arm. A white arm. With blue hands, and a stupid wing and vent attached to the shoulder. 

"Aww, what?" Ambulon grumbled but relaxed a little. He wasn't in an experimental Decepticon lab, but…ugh. Pharma's berth. _Again._

Memory files from the previous day booted. Nanites. Emotional breakdowns. The thwarted theft. Pharma's revelation of his little plot to protect Ambulon. Another night of pleasurable pleading. And then falling into recharge together. Ambulon winced, silently berating himself. 

At least they hadn’t shared sparks.

The last memory file executed, reminding him that actually yes, they had shared sparks. He'd opened his chest plate and given himself to Pharma in exchange for the overload of his life. Damn. How many boundaries were left at this point? _Well, um, at least we haven't spent more than four nights in a row together. Or killed each other in a murder-suicide spat. Or become Conjunx Endura. We don't even like each other. Right?_

Ambulon knew he was reaching. Not that he cared, because he wasn't going to make this spark-sharing thing a habit. For real. That was a promise.

Another thing he needed to stop doing was ruminating when he should be running. This is what always landed him in Pharma's berth in the first place. No more sneaking and plotting. If he wanted to get out of this room, he had to seize the moment and brutally squash the part of him that loved being in Pharma's arms. 

Or liked. That was a better word. He liked being held by Pharma. He certainly didn't love it.

So without another thought, giving no regard to how much noise he made or how delicately he did or didn't extricate himself from Pharma's grasp, Ambulon slipped off the berth and dashed out the door. Not his most dignified moment, but the whoosh of the door panels shutting behind him was like a sweet trumpet of success.

Ambulon stood in the hall and pumped his fist in the air. "Aha, yes!" A chance to relax in private and take a real shower. Maybe there was a Primus, after all.

"Ambulon? What are you doing?"

Or maybe not. Ambulon turned to see First Aid. 

The little bot cocked his head, no doubt questioning Ambulon's victory pose. 

"Oh, um, you know." Ambulon casually dropped his fist and rubbed his helm, as if that were the reason for raising his hand up in the first place. "Just…dropping off some reports." Yuck. That sounded really lame even to his audiodials.

"Dropping off some reports? I see." If First Aid didn't believe him, he had the decency to not let it show. "We've got about two hours until the shift starts. What are you up to now?"

"Shower. Energon. Maybe look at today’s charts." Ambulon remained polite, though he was dying to edge away. Great. Morning small talk with First Aid. Another thing to escape from.

"Please tell me you're gonna repaint yourself before the shift."

"Oh." Ambulon looked down at himself. He was an absolute mess. His white paint was cracked and chipped almost everywhere, exposing a network of blue and purple patches. His entire midsection was a huge swath of purple. And he had blue paint streaks between his legs. Pretty Pharma blue, which was way more embarrassing than his old paint showing through. "Yeah, um, I should probably do that too."

"Probably? Try definitely. I can help you. C'mon, I haven't showered either." He took Ambulon's arm. "We can hit the wash racks together." 

Aw, frag. Showering next to First Aid was the last thing he wanted to do. Ambulon shrugged off the smaller bot's grip and stepped back. "It's okay. Um, really. I'll get to it."

"Will you?" First Aid crossed his arms over his chest. "Ambulon, no offense, but you can't hit the ward today looking like this. It's totally suspicious. What if Tarn stops by again? What if the DJD see you?"

"I really don't need any help," Ambulon mumbled.

"It’ll go way faster," said First Aid. "I'm a really good painter, and it's hard to paint yourself." He took Ambulon's arm again, much gentler this time. "You know, it's okay to ask for help sometimes. Anyway, you kinda saved the day yesterday. You don't have to think about it as help, think about it as me paying you back for detoxing me."

Ambulon wanted nothing more than to shove nurse away and deal with it himself, but he could practically _feel_ First Aid's smile behind the mask. Beaming at him with a gentle kindness that promised both logic and the chance to keep his self-respect. And though he opened his mouth to tell First Aid to frag off, instead he found himself formulating the words, "Yeah, fine. Let's make this quick."

They walked together to the wash racks on the other end of the hall, opposite from their living quarters. It was a small room for a small staff, although the stalls were high-walled enough to protect the privacy of a bot as tall as Pharma. Should Pharma ever deign to shower in the same room as his underlings.

"Whoa," said First Aid. "What happened here?"

The wash racks looked like they always did, with the exception of the first stall. It had a thick layer of solvent still on the bottom, unable to empty due to the large patches of white paint covering the drain. There were fist-shaped dents in the wall, underneath some stained, sticky blobs that looked like energon.

Ambulon briefly wondered if there would ever be a time during his tenure with the Autobots that wouldn't be colored with humiliation. "Yeah. I, uh, had a little moment in here yesterday. Right before I realized we'd been poisoned."

First Aid laughed, a pleasant chirp with no real mockery behind it. "At least no one saw you freak out. I'm still embarrassed by what I remember."

"Don't worry about it. You were nowhere near as bad as Pharma."

"Yeah, he got pretty weird, didn't he?" First Aid moved to the stall and picked up a strip of wet paint from the drain. "Can't say I'm all that surprised though. Did you notice how much high grade he keeps in his desk?"

Shame twisted Ambulon's circuitry as he watched First Aid clean. "I can do that." He snatched the piece of floppy wet paint from First Aid's hands. "Really, I got it."

"It's no problem. There's not that much here."

"Please," said Ambulon, clutching the white paint strip to his chest and blocking First Aid from entering the stall further. He was powerless to stop the humiliated panic from slipping into his energy field. "Please don't." _Please don't make me beg you not to clean up after me._

First Aid stared for a second, then backed away. "Sure. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry just…you shouldn't…I can do it."

"Yeah. No worries." First Aid went into the adjacent stall and turned on the shower. 

Ambulon quickly picked up the rest of the paint and threw it into the disposal unit on the wall, wishing that the memories of the event would disappear down the drain along with the old solvent. There wasn't much he could do about the dents in the side of the stall. He didn’t even remember punching it. Oh well, fortunately for him his boss was a detail-oriented control freak who would totally notice at some point and want an explanation. 

The solvent shower itself was a blessed relief. Warm liquid sluiced between his plating, washing off all the grime and transfluid and terror and confusion of the previous day. Reminding him that, despite all his concessions, he was still alive. He could still fight for his personal missions. And life in the Autobots was not without its comforts.

 

Showering next to First Aid wasn't as unpleasant as Ambulon had expected. The nurse’s room, however, was another matter.

Due to a life of war and constantly shifting danger, most Cybertronians didn't keep a lot of "stuff". First Aid didn't either, but what he did have bumped the creepiness factor up to eleven. His belongings apparently consisted of Wreckers memorabilia, some datapads, and no fewer than five trillion Autobot badges. At least it seemed that way. All framed and mounted on the walls. It was downright disturbing. 

Ambulon's optics darted around the room, attempting to examine his surroundings without appearing too shifty. _Who pulls decorations off of dead bodies and hangs them on their walls? Isn't that what serial killers do? See, it's always the nice and quiet ones._

"Have a seat." First Aid pulled a chair into the center of the floor, completely oblivious that his living quarters looked like an Overlord trophy room without the splatters. "Lemme get my things."

Ambulon sat and drank the energon cube he had grabbed on their way back from the wash racks. _Whoa._ Was that a voltage variable harness on First Aid's berth? And, yikes, spark casing connectors? _Knew the little freak was kinky._

First Aid returned with his supplies. He circled Ambulon. "We really don't have time to take your old paint off but-"

"Don't bother," Ambulon interrupted. "You're right. No time. Just paint over it. That'll be fine." 

"Okay. I'll buff down the edges of the white a little and paint over the other colors." He ran a finger down Ambulon's side. "While I can't say I like the Decepticon connotations, your original colors are nice. I'll bet you looked good in blue and purple."

Ambulon lifted his face to stare into the smaller bot's mask. "I prefer white and red," he said.

"Yeah," said First Aid, picking up a small sander. "So do I."

First Aid went to work, buffing down the edges of the remaining white paint to create a smoother finish. He directed Ambulon in a manner most professional, guiding him with calm directions. Sit, stand, lift your right arm, put your left leg on the chair. To Ambulon's great relief, it wasn’t all that bizarre. There was a light stinging sensation across his sensor net, but it didn't hurt. It wasn't even awkward.

The process kicked up more chips and dust, and soon First Aid was finished. He handed Ambulon some dry rags. "Okay, wipe yourself down and I'll sweep up. Then we'll paint you."

Ambulon wiped himself off, flicking tiny paint chips to the floor. He felt like he should be thanking First Aid profusely, but he didn't trust himself to vocalize the words with the level of distant gratitude that he thought appropriate. 

"Don't be nervous," said First Aid, misinterpreting Ambulon's social awkwardness. "I'm great at this." He lifted the spray canister of white paint in his hand, wielding it like a weapon. "Lean forward. I'm gonna start with your lower back."

First Aid's hand was warm on his lower back, touching with far less pressure than Pharma ever would. Ambulon flinched.

First Aid chuckled. "Sorry. Primus, Ambulon, I'm not gonna do anything weird. Don't be so-"

"Don't say tetchy. I hate it when people call me tetchy."

"Actually, I was gonna say touchy. Tetchy works too though." He stuck his face close to Ambulon's. "You can't tell, but I'm winking at you right now."

Ambulon pulled back, trying to put some distance between them. "Yeah yeah. Do my fragging paint."

"Okay, Doctor Tetchy. I mean Ambulon."

Despite his playfulness, First Aid was all business when he fired up the paint gun. He laid down the paint with the utmost care, like an exquisitely programmed artist. Or Pharma performing surgery. Alternating between large sweeps with the sprayer and small strokes with various sized brushes. He took his time where white met red, painstakingly working on the edges so they were sharp and crisp. He directed Ambulon when to sit and stand with simple, one word directions. The paint dried fast, allowing First Aid to put on multiple coats.

As the procedure wore on, Ambulon found himself becoming more and more relaxed. The hum of the sprayer was hypnotic. He offlined his optics, losing himself in the experience of being pampered without any expectations. It was…nice. Really nice. Something that would definitely be in his best interests not to get used to.

Just this once, maybe it was okay to accept the gesture. Ambulon let himself drift, following First Aid's instructions when they were softly spoken to him. Some of the tension in his struts unwound, and he floated in a state of slight relaxation, unfettered by thoughts of guilt or anger or uncertainty. 

He wasn't sure how long it lasted. All too soon First Aid was shaking his shoulder and saying, "Ambulon? Did you fall asleep?"

"Mpph. No."

"I think I'm done. Let me get you a mirror."

There was the sound of something dragging on the floor, and Ambulon onlined his optics to see First Aid pulling a full-length mirror taller than himself from the closet. He leaned it against the wall in front of them. "Check it out."

Ambulon looked at his reflection, spark nearly twisting and shattering. The paint job was flawless, the edges were pristine, and the colors were brilliant. He did look good. He looked like a real Autobot, and that hurt more than seeing himself as a chipped, disheveled mess. 

He shuttered his optics, hoping to blink away the ribbons of light and tears that threatened to form, torn between extreme gratitude and extreme regret. It was so painful to see himself like this and know it was temporary, but he felt so indebted that someone would take the time to do it. Ambulon's mouth opened and closed, unsure what to say.

"You're not saying anything. Do you hate it?"

"No, it's…amazing. I…I can't thank you enough."

First Aid snapped his fingers. "Told you I'm awesome. You look damn good, if I may say." He laughed. "If I may say that to my superior, that is. In a totally professional capacity."

A new wave of guilt washed over Ambulon. That's right, he was First Aid's superior. He had demoted the smaller bot, an action that had no bearing on First Aid's willingness to help him. 

Ambulon met First Aid's gaze in the mirror. The depth of his gratitude had him mumbling the words, "I couldn't ignore it."

"What?"

"Rung's report." Ambulon turned to face First Aid directly. "I couldn't ignore it."

"Oh." First Aid looked at the floor, a rare lick of shame evident in his energy field. "I know."

"Nurse was the highest rank available. Pharma wanted me to take you down further. Truly, First Aid, I'm…I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your fault, Ambulon. I know that."

Ambulon stammered. Why was this slag always so hard? Why didn't they give you some Autobot sensitivity training when you defected? And why the hell couldn't First Aid show as much initiative with his real work as he did with his personal activities?

"On the bright side, you really do look damn good now,” said First Aid.

"For a little while, at least."

"Nah, this is a professional First Aid paint job. I even used a top coat."

"It won't last."

First Aid brushed something invisible off Ambulon's arm. "Why not?"

"It'll crack again. Nothing can permanently stay on the purple and blue underneath."

"Oh. Huh. Well, when we have some free time I'll remove the stuff underneath and we'll refinish you for real."

Ambulon shook his head, spark heavy. "You can't remove it. It won't come off."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's an experimental paint designed by Shockwave's team. The combiner experiment I was in, they wanted us to look uniform at all times. No exceptions. Right before they started our project there was a little issue with the Constructicons. Scrapper lost a bet and had to repaint himself, so for a while Devastator was wreaking havoc with one pink leg." Ambulon allowed himself a small grin. The video of Devastator rampaging through an organic planet with a hot pink limb had been legendary in the Decepticon army. More legendary was the video of Megatron's reaction. The bot who sent _that_ file through the ranks was never heard from again. 

Ambulon stopped smiling. "Megatron was not happy. After that, all gestalt bots were repainted with this experimental stuff that you can't remove, and can't paint over. That's why my finish is always chipped."

First Aid covered his mouth plate with his hand. "The Autobots couldn't do anything for you when you defected?"

"They were gonna send me to some special scientist. Perceptor, I think his name was."

"Ooo..he's a genius. And a Wrecker. He's pretty hot."

"I wouldn't know. He went on a mission somewhere, so they sent me to a bot named Brainstorm instead."

First Aid shuddered. "Brainstorm?”

"Yeah. His genius idea was to weaponize it so the energy from my spark concentrated into laser beams that shot out from the paint molecules themselves. Told me there was a forty percent chance it would work without killing me."

"Wow."

"I told him to get fragged."

"So you're stuck like this?"

"Yeah," said Ambulon. He took in his reflection, knowing how it would feel when the facade of belonging cracked all over again. 

First Aid wrapped his arms around Ambulon's waist, the paint dry enough to allow for a genuine hug. "I had no idea. I'm so sorry."

Ambulon patted the smaller bot's head. "Ultimately, it's a small price to pay for being free. Thanks again for the paint job. I truly do appreciate it."

"Well, when it chips again, we'll have to repaint it again,” said First Aid.

The simple statement overwhelmed Ambulon. His throat intake closed, optics threatening again to spill over. And from the back of his logic subroutines, a tiny voice asked him if he was sure he was fragging the right coworker.

"Promise me one thing," said First Aid.

“What’s that?”

The little bot leaned closer, eager. His voice conspiratorial. "Promise me that you and your purple spike will come _real hard_ for Pharma later. He's so much easier to work with when he's in a good mood." 

With that, he doubled over in hysterics, clutching his midsection and spitting amused static. 

First Aid’s laughter was so light and infectious that Ambulon found he couldn’t even get annoyed over the comment. He scowled at the nurse anyway, just so the little fragger didn't think he was going soft.

 

 

The morning shift passed in a blur of routine propex swabs and patch up jobs. A ship of exhausted Autobots had limped in, more under fueled than anything else. There was a small accident at the mines, resulting in minor injuries. Nothing First Aid and Ambulon couldn't handle with practiced ease.

In stark contrast to the eerie silence of the previous day, the ward now buzzed with the sounds of diagnostic machinery, new patients, and the occasional raucous laughter from the miners. 

Ambulon wasn't surprised to see that his next patient was a mech named Dodger, a frequent Delphi visitor. If there was a mining accident, chances were that Dodger was involved. The bot had incredibly bad luck, yet he was still alive. So perhaps he had incredibly good luck. Ambulon hadn't decided.

He had decided that his own luck was pretty bad, as Dodger always ended up _his_ patient. The miner made no effort to hide his distrust for Ambulon, and turned all visits into a surly and protracted affair. 

Not that Ambulon cared. He dealt with a surly Pharma on a daily basis. Next to that, Dodger was an amateur.

Today, however, was different. He brightened as Ambulon approached the med slab, despite his lower leg hanging from the knee joint at a disturbing angle. "Hey, there he is! The terror of Delphi."

Ambulon groaned. "Please tell me you're not all calling me that."

Dodger laughed. "I dunno. We've all seen the security footage of the loading docks. Never thought I'd say it, Doc, but you can really kick some aft. And surfing a MARB over those 'Cons? Awesome!"

The compliments were too surreal. "Thanks," he said, honestly. "It's kinda my signature move."

"Well, it rocked."

Before Ambulon steered the conversation back to Dodger's broken leg, a dark voice bellowed his name so loudly, the entire ward went silent. 

**"Ambulon."**

A chill swept through the room. For a split second, Ambulon's entire being threatened to fritz into panic. _Tarn?_

A glance at the entrance revealed it was not Tarn, but Pharma, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed and foot tapping. "I need to speak to you. _Now._ "

Ambulon excused himself from his patient and went to Pharma. The jet thrust a datapad into his hands. "What the hell is this?" asked Pharma, low and toxic.

It was the datapad Ambulon had left in Pharma's office. The one with the screen set to clearly display a test result in Pharma's medical record. Left in a place where a nosey, entitled Decepticon like Tarn could easily find it. 

Leaving it there had seemed like such a good, helpful idea last night. Seeing Pharma's face set into a mask of steel rage, Ambulon started to question that decision. Regardless, no backing down now. "It looks like someone changed your record to reflect a fake test result in order to turn off one of your admirers, and then put it in a place where that admirer would surely find it."

"But chronic cobaltia!?!" Pharma shrieked. "You put an interface transmitted disease in my permanent record?"

The ward fell silent for the second time in less then ten minutes. Optics and facemasks riveted on the pair of arguing doctors. Some bots gasped. Others giggled.

Pharma huffed, grabbed Ambulon's arm, and pulled him out the door and down the hall. "But chronic cobaltia," he repeated, in a harsh whisper this time. "You put an interface transmitted disease in my permanent record?"

Ambulon threw up his arms. "Yeah, Pharma, I did. Much like Megatron, Tarn’s into jets. He’s also an overly cultured priss. He won't dare try to interface with you now. He probably won't even touch you. Lemme guess, he left right after he looked saw that, didn't he?"

"You…" Pharma's wings rattled. His turbine spun with a high-pitched whine. "You should have-"

"Told you?" Ambulon hadn't left the datapad with any thoughts of just revenge. Hell, at the time, he hadn't known that Pharma had changed his energy signature. Still, he couldn't resist the opportunity to throw Pharma's words back in his smug face. "I thought it would be safer if you didn't know. Plausibly deniability and all that."

"You…"

"Hmmm…imagine that. Not so great when someone messes with your medical history without telling you. At least yours was a records change, and not wildly invasive surgery."

Pharma looked so fragged off he was practically vibrating. 

A little tendril of apprehension curled around Ambulon's spark. "I…I was trying to help you. You were really freaked out at the prospect of Tarn wanting to interface with you. Hey, I would be too." He shrugged. "You have the authority to change it if you want, of course."

There was a tiny screech of metal, the sound of a nail dragging down someone's plating. Pharma grinding his teeth. "Of course." He looked back in the direction of the ward. "Have you mixed the neurex saturate like I told you?"

"Yes."

"And cleaned all the energon leads?"

"Actually, yes we have."

Pharma loomed over him and frowned. "What about diagnostics calibration?"

_Damn._ Ambulon winced. "That was, um, next on our list."

A subtle satisfaction pulsed through Pharma's EM field. "See that it's done."

"Will you be on the ward today?" 

"Probably not. I'm due in surgery soon. Four-way fuel pump transplant."

"So you've mentioned." _Nine hundred thousand times this week._

"I'm one of the donors."

"You don't say."

Pharma stepped back, the veil of uninterested professionalism once again in place. "You’re in charge of the ward. I'll expect your report summarizing the events of the day later."

"It'll be in your inbox," said Ambulon. "I don't think I'll be dropping any reports off in person tonight, _sir_." 

Pharma's lips pulled into his patented haughty smirk. He traced a finger down the side of Ambulon's face. "We'll see about that."

Ambulon smirked back, hoping he looked half as confident. Also hoping that the little hitch in his vents wasn't audible. Pharma's touch left a thin strip of fire in its wake. 

He watched the jet stalk off, then made his way back to his duties. Back to helping and saving lives. His missions. The mechanical spine of his life's work. And when Ambulon stepped on the ward again, for a little while, everything made sense.

 

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


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